Archaeologists have found some ancient tools on the Greek island of Crete which they believe might be evidence of one of man’s earliest sea voyages.
The Greek Culture Ministry said in a statement that the tools are between 130,000 and 700,000 years old, about the same age as the shelters on the island’s south coast.
“The results of the survey not only provide evidence of sea voyages in the Mediterranean tens of thousands of years earlier than we were aware of so far, but also change our understanding of early hominids’ cognitive abilities,” the ministry statement said.
The tools were discovered during a survey of caves and rock shelters near the village of Plakias by archaeologists from the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and the Culture Ministry.
Such tools were mostly used by Heidelberg Man and Homo Erectus, two extinct precursors of the modern human race, which evolved from Africa about 200,000 years ago.
“Up to now we had no proof of Early Stone Age presence on Crete,” said senior ministry archaeologist Maria Vlazaki, adding that it was not clear where the hominids had sailed from, or whether the settlements were permanent.
“They may have come from Africa or from the east,” she said. “Future study should help.”
The island of Crete separated from the mainland about five million years ago, so whoever made the tools must have reached there by sea travelling at least 40 miles.
The finding does not support the popular theory that human ancestors migrated to Europe from Africa by land, the Associated Press reported.
The previous earliest evidence of open-sea travel dates back to 11,000 years ago in Greece and about 60,000 years worldwide.
The Greek-American archeology team has asked permission to conduct a more thorough excavation of the area. Greek authorities say they will answer later this year.
JENIN — Israeli forces briefly detained one man after they entered the a university residence in Jenin, telling students they were searching for wanted Palestinians.
Soldiers also erected checkpoints around the city, targeting three Jenin-area villages.
Eight military units entered a dorm housing students from the Arab American University, onlookers estimated, but a security guard said he would not allow soldiers to enter rooms in the female dormitory.
When the soldiers reached the women’s dorm, a security guard prevented their access, witnesses said, [the soldiers] then detained him for over an hour.
Residents said troops also raided Kafr Ra’i and Fahma villages southwest of Jenin. Further, the army installed two checkpoints – one between Rummana and Zububa villages west of the city and another between Zabda village and the university, locals said.
An army spokeswoman said one new checkpoint had been installed near Zububa, but that it was later removed. She was not immediately familiar with raids in the area but said she would look into it.
Israel has increased the demolition of Palestinian homes in East al-Quds (Jerusalem) as part of a “broad policy” to drive Palestinians out of the city, says a new report.
The final months of 2010 saw a sharp rise in the number of Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes in East al-Quds, Israeli civil rights group Ir Amim (City of Peoples) said in a statement on Tuesday.
The civil rights group said the rise in demolitions was calculated to drive Palestinians out of the city, AFP reported.
“It is important to emphasize that the issue of home demolitions in Jerusalem is not a neutral enforcement of the law, but rather part of a broad policy that seeks to weaken Palestinian civil society in east Jerusalem and drive them out,” said the statement.
It documented 74 demolitions in east al-Quds in 2010, with the monthly figure peaking in December with 17 incidents.
Israeli forces have demolished at least two homes, in the Sheikh Jarrah and Beit Hanina neighborhoods of the city since the New Year
This is a continuation of the sharp rise in home demolitions in East al-Quds that has been the trend since mid-2010, and more significantly in the last two months of 2010, the group said.
The demolition of Palestinian homes and other structures in East al-Quds and the occupied West Bank happens on a regular basis.
Israel claims the demolitions are only ordered for structures that were built without planning permission.
The Palestinians however say it is virtually impossible to get a building permit, particularly for housing in the city, and Ir Amim said the demolitions were part of a political policy.
Israel occupied East al-Quds during a 1967 aggression and later annexed it in a move not recognized by the international community.
“I think the fact that the defendant is an activist for Bedouin ‘diaspora’ rights only makes it harder for his situation. Because he cannot the on one hand argue that there are rights violations or non-preservation of rights for the group that he belongs to, while on the other hand crudely violating the law time after time.” (Judge Zachary Yemini, Ramle magistrates court)
The crude violation of the law that Judge Zachary Yemini of the Ramle magistrates court refers to in last week’s conviction of Nuri al-Oqbi, the prominent rights activist for the Palestinian community in the Negev and Lod and head of the Association for Support and Defence of Bedouin Rights in Israel, was building and operating a garage without a license in his residential space in Lod.
Nuri began operation of this garage in 1964 at a time when Lod lacked an industrial zone from which he could operate. The judge handed his decision on 27 December 2010, ruling that Nuri’s garage was illegal, its operation being a violation of Article 18 of the Business Licensing Law (1968).
Sixty-eight-year old Nuri, who suffers from a heart condition, was sentenced to serve a seven-month prison sentence in Nitzan jail in Ramle. On his way to prison, to where he was led immediately following the sentence because he could not raise the necessary 30,000 shekels (8,500 US dollars) to stay his sentence by a week, Nuri collapsed and had to be admitted to hospital.
The purpose of penalizing business operations and construction without license can be appreciated. Issuing of licenses is to better guarantee that businesses conform to standards that protect the environment and better ensure public peace, safety and health. However, a more circumspect look at the case would ask who issues licenses and on what grounds.
Generally in Israel, the municipal authority is designated as the licensing authority and the approval of other relevant government ministries is also required. As the Israeli peace bloc Gush Shalom reports, in Nuri’s case the Lod municipality’s policy for issuing licenses has varied, with the garage receiving a license in some years and in others not. Nuri is quoted as saying that he had received certification from the police and fire departments, the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of the Environment that his garage conformed to all regulations. He asserts that others in his situation who have operated a business in a residential zone have received a license from the municipality and that the Lod municipality’s refusal to issue him with a license stemmed from his critical stance of the municipality’s policies towards Palestinians in the community, particularly the policy of home demolitions. “I am sure that if I had been ready to toe the line dictated by the municipality, I would have had no problem in obtaining a license. Their real problem is not my garage, but my public activity.” The Lod municipality, the body with the authority to issue Nuri a garage licence, is also that body which brought forth the case.
Legal racism
However, discriminatory action towards Palestinian citizens in Lod did not emanate solely from the municipality in Nuri’s case. Judge Zachary’s decision betrays the racism implicit in how the legal system treats the Palestinian Bedouin community.
Although the court had initially hinted that community service in lieu of six months imprisonment was to be Nuri’s sentence, during the sentencing Judge Zachary decided differently. “I think that giving a lesser sentence will convey something of a negative message to the community and to the Bedouin ‘diaspora’ especially [emphasis added]. The negative message is that breaking the law in Israel, and especially violating a court ruling, is worthwhile and a triviality”.
Judge Zachary’s words are telling. He refers to the Bedouin – and this is not uncommon in how the Israeli authorities and legal system refer to the Bedouin community – as “diaspora”, meaning that they come from elsewhere, a characterization which feeds the myth that the Bedouin are squatters and interlopers on government land. This myth is also used to justify the government’s deliberate denial of water and electricity to 83,000 citizens living in the Negev’s unrecognized villages.
Second, the judge decided to imprison Nuri with the specific purpose of sending a message particularly to the Bedouin community, meaning that he sees the community as especially criminally inclined.
Third, as the opening quote states, the judge equates the illegality in the Israeli state’s dispossession, land expropriation, enforcing of military rule, destruction of crops and homes of the Palestinian Bedouin community (as he says Nuri argues) with the illegality of building a garage in a residential zone without licence. This indicates the gravity with which he considers the acts of the state towards the Bedouin population and the seriousness with which he takes civil rights struggles in the Negev. In the decision, there is also chastisement of Nuri’s work as a civil liberties activist, as if fighting for equality and human rights warrants such sanction.
Nuri’s encounters with the legal system are many. He was arrested in February 2010 for an entire week, an incarceration he described as “intolerable … [where] people are treated like animals”. He was charged with 40 criminal counts of invasion, uprooting trees and violations of an order for being present on his family’s historical lands in al-Araqib in the Negev, where the state refuses to recognize his ownership. In the end, the court issued him an “exclusion order”, preventing him from being less than 10 kilometres from his land in al-Araqib without a guarantor.
In addition, in another decision of a magistrate court in June 2010 (which he has appealed) he has been ordered to pay the Israel Lands Administration (ILA) roughly 300,000 shekels (85,000 dollars) for expenses the ILA incurred in demolishing his tent and uprooting his land in al-Araqib!
As these examples show, prompted by the executive, Israeli courts are actively working towards:
Silencing voices of resistance to official plans and narratives, such as Nuri’s, given the injustices happening to the Palestinian community in Lod
Issuance of home demolition and evacuation orders to entire villages, as happened in Umm al-Hieran, Atir and al-Araqib, thereby enabling the clearing of entire villages of Bedouin in the Negev
Construction of a culture and ideology where racist myths about the “Bedouin diaspora” are constructed, affirmed and deployed, such as Bedouin as inclined to criminal activity
Penalization of activism, human rights and civil liberties struggles and of human rights defenders, such as Nuri al-Oqbi
Deligitimization of the human rights struggles of the Palestinian community by detracting from the state’s discriminatory policies and instead emphasizing the community’s “crude” illegal activity, such as operating businesses and constructing homes without licence, and not following court orders that call for their demolition.
Nuri has a claim case pending before Justice Dovrat at the Beersheba District Court over five strips of land in al-Araqib and Zahiliqah. Over the length of the case, it is expected that many pertinent issues dealing with Zionist settlement in the Negev and the uprooting and dispossession of Bedouin will be addressed – whether the Negev was indeed terra nullius, whether traditional Bedouin use, occupation and ownership of the land will be recognized by the Israeli courts, if oral histories of Bedouin will count or be trumped by the writings of European explorers and if indeed a gross illegality was committed when the authorities forcibly expelled Nuri’s family and other al-Araqib residents in the summer of 1951 while promising them a return in six months that never happened.
Nuri’s land claims case could be an appropriate opportunity for the Israeli court to live up to its assertion of being an independent arbiter and not an instrument of racial rule, where stratifications of political, economic and social privilege along ethnocratic lines are constructed, maintained and reproduced.
Nasser Victor Rego is a civil and human rights expert and PhD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Canada.
Bangladesh, the largest Delta in the world, has been the poster child of a scary sea level rise story ever since “An Inconvenient Truth”. There is much to be concerned about in Bangladesh, and flooding is most certainly one of the seasonal hardships Bangladesh has to put up with. Sea level rise just happens to be not one of them.
Some Geology:
The Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers flow through the Himalaya Foredeep and end-up dumping their sediment load in the Gulf of Bengal, forming a huge delta at the ocean edge. Deltas have one common characteristic in that they are actually formed by the rivers bringing the sediment to the ocean, in this case a huge load coming off the largest and highest mountain range in the world, the Himalayas. The proto Ganges and Brahmaputra have been active for millions of years, and have been filling the fore deep, a sinking part of the crust caused by tectonic loading of the Himalaya thrust belt. The collision of the Indian Plate with the Asian Plate has resulted in a structural complex deformation of the rock layers, which in itself is a most fascinating and only partially understood process. The net result however is a pile of rocks (The Himalayas) on the north side of the Indian plate, bending this plate down under its weight. The resulting trough is almost simultaneously filled with sediment eroded from this same pile of rocks. The mechanism of deposition is mainly by fluvial processes (river sediments) and alluvial fans directly shedding off the incipient mountain range into the fore deep. The rivers have been finding their way, following the natural law of water flowing to the lowest point. In this case the bay of Bengal, where the subsidence of the earth crust is also influenced by the Arakan-Yoma foldbelt of Myanmar. The resulting depression is filled with sediments transported for more than 20 million years by the proto Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers, and has possibly been an active centre of sediment deposition for more than 60 million years.
All this sounds very impressive, but what deltas in essence are is the place where a large amount of fine grained sediments are being deposited due to a significant reduction in flow rate when the river flows into a wider oceanic basin. This deposition is cyclical yet continuous in such sense that it has been a continuous process for millions of years but also very much seasonal and thus cyclical. The Himalayas are subject to monsoon rains as well as seasonal snow melt, resulting in variable yet yearly, predictable jumps in run-off, generally resulting in flooding of the “flood plains” that in the dry season are well above water level. Those flood plains are protected by modest natural levees. Natural levees are formed when a river overflows and loses its coarsest sediment first, in proximity to the main channel, thus building up natural high ridges along the main river body. These natural levees have been recognized as effective dikes by some and have occasionally been enhanced and built up by human inhabitants of flood plains (e.g. the “summer dikes” in The Netherlands). Levees are, however, seldom high and strong enough to withstand large floods, in which case they break through with resulting widespread seasonal flooding.
During flooding the fine muds in the now rapidly decelerating river (the same volume of water now flows over a much wider area and even appears to stand still for some time) are deposited and when the flood waters recede, there is a fine layer of mud left behind. This annual or rather frequent flooding allows a delta to build “up” during floods. 1 mm/year still adds up to 1 meter every 1000 years, which is approximately equivalent to the annual subsidence in the Gulf of Bengal, also known as the Patuakhali Depression.
Sea level rise and deltas
Deltas have been extensively studied for many years, partially motivated by pure self-preservation, partially because abundant oil and gas has been found in delta sediments.
One of the interesting things about deltas is that they are very dynamic and by their very nature are building up and out rather than drown and disappear.
When sea level drops, the rivers tend to by-pass their most recently built sediment wedge and incise deeper valleys in their old river beds, then dump their sediment further out into the ocean and build-up a new addition to the Delta complex. When sea level rises, the delta builds-up rather than out into the ocean and thus stays more or less balanced with sea level. When sea level rises very rapidly, and the sediment load can not keep up, the Delta will find a new equilibrium further back, where the available accommodation space balances the sediment load. The Ganges-Brahmaputra delta happens to have not only survived one of the most rapid sea level rises in geological time, post Pleistocene, but has built and built for millions of years thanks to being endowed with one of the largest sediment loads on earth. More than 16 km (vertically) of sediments derived from the Himalayas has been deposited and consistently built and maintained a delta environment. The sea encroaches where the rivers are not, due to sediment compaction; the fine muds deposited away from the main channels during seasonal floods initially hold a lot of water and over time this water is expelled. Rivers change their course when low areas become the preferred place to flow to. This constant shifting of rivers and river mouths to the lowest areas, forms the distributing process by which a delta spreads and builds. Unless sea level rise and the resulting increase in water depth and accommodation space exceeds the sediment supply, deltas will never drown. Bangladesh and the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta will be there for as long as the Himalayas deliver the gravels, sands and mud.
Flooding
So what about the flooding? The seasonal flooding is of course a direct result of the dramatic increase of run-off during monsoon and annual snow melt. The rivers are literally constricting the excessive water flow. It can not unload its water fast enough and as a result the water level rises. The levees overflow and/or break through and the floodplains in between the rivers are flooded. Water level sometimes rises by two or more meters. Sea level has nothing to do with it. One mm more or less has no influence on the massive seasonal run-off. The flooding and resulting deposition of a film of mud actually completely compensates for the estimated annual global sea level rise. The lower the flood plain, the higher the flood water column, the more silt and mud is deposited. It all evens out, hence the very uniform flat nature of delta plains.
Of course deltas can only build up so much, and are therefore always more or less in equilibrium with flood and sea level. Flooding will be a regular occurrence, for as long as there are monsoon seasons. Unless people build dikes and dams to regulate the flow, floods will happen. While dikes seem to be a good idea, it does modify the dynamics of a system that is in balance with sea level and sediment supply. The Netherlands (effectively the Rhine delta) have been building dikes for more than 1000 years and as a result many old settlements are now well below high river level. The absence of regular sediments added to the floodplain requires ever stronger and higher dikes. Sooner or later the imbalance will no longer be sustainable. Wisely, new settlements are now mostly built with adding thick layers of sand, not only to strengthen the foundation of the new housing, but with an added benefit of artificially elevating the country. Al Gore had it partially right to flag the Netherlands as being threatened to drown, not so much by rising sea level as well by having engineered a safer environment from river flooding, thus starving the flood plains of balancing sedimentation.
In summary:
Deltas are formed at the boundary of rivers and oceans. The rivers that build deltas flow to low and slowly sinking parts of the crust, where large volumes of sediment are being deposited. They will always be in balance with sea level but almost by definition increase in size, if rivers are allowed to follow their course. Deltas, by their very nature are building out and up. They also tend to flood frequently and seasonally, often with disastrous effects on the inhabitants. People living in deltas should learn to swim, have a boat and generally be aware of what can happen. Sea level rise is not an issue in large deltas; they have been proven to be able to keep up with any sea level rise. Flooding disasters are seasonally the result of excessive run-off, and occasionally due to unfortunate storm surges that result in breaks through natural barriers, but this has nothing to do with sea level rise. Bangladesh will be there, even if all the ice in the world has melted, with its people still fighting floods while farming the fertile floodplains.
Four months back, Jeffrey Goldberg published a long piece in the Atlantic called “The Point of No Return,” making the Israeli case for the United States to attack Iran in Never-again terms: Iran is threatening the existence of “the Jewish people,” Israel is bound to act if the U.S. fails to, the U.S. will do a better job. The piece has stirred a lot of discussion. Goldberg has gone on national media and panels at thinktanks to promote these bellicose ideas.
But no one has pointed out that the piece makes the same argument Goldberg marshaled eight years ago for the U.S. to attack Iraq, that time with an article in the New Yorker magazine under the headline, “The Great Terror.” Iraq too was bent on the destruction of the Jewish people, and was developing a nuclear weapon to do so.
The language in the pieces is eerily similar. The last time the concentration camp Goldberg invoked was Bergen-Belsen. This time around it’s Auschwitz.
Both times the enemy is “three years” away from going nuclear. Last time:
He [August Hanning of German intelligence agency] does not equivocate. “It is our estimate that Iraq will have an atomic bomb in three years,” he said.
This time:
Iran is, at most, one to three years away from having a breakout nuclear capability (often understood to be the capacity to assemble more than one missile-ready nuclear device within about three months of deciding to do so).
The last time round Goldberg was flat wrong.
“The Great Terror” stated that Saddam had links to Al Qaeda, and the article was cited by both Bush and Cheney as proof of the threat posed by Iraq (Muhammad Idrees Ahmad has told me). As it turned out, Saddam Hussein didn’t possess weapons of mass destruction and didn’t attack Israel and wasn’t making a nuclear warhead or an aflatoxin/chemical/biological one and wasn’t importing canisters of mysterious nerve gases, as Goldberg had affirmed. But meantime, the U.S. was at war with Iraq, in some measure because of the bad ideas that Goldberg proliferated, and we and the Iraqis and its neighbors are still suffering the consequences.
This time around, the question is, Why is anyone listening to Goldberg? Why are prestige news organizations giving him the microphone?
But let’s compare similarities in the casus belli pieces.
In both cases, Goldberg turned Koran scholar to support his views. Last time, Saddam’s rage against the Kurds was based in part on
a chapter in the Koran that allows conquering Muslim armies to seize the spoils of their foes. It reads, in part, ‘Against them’—your enemies—‘make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah…’
Now Iran is the problem, Goldberg writes that “the depth of official Iranian hatred of Israel and Jews” can only be explained by looking to
a line of Shia Muslim thinking that views Jews as ritually contaminated, a view derived in part from the Koran’s portrayal of Jews as treasonous foes of the Prophet Muhammad.
In both cases, Goldberg alarms readers with Holocaust-tinged fears that a Muslim country is planning to wipe Jews out.
[T]he experts say, Saddam’s desire is to expel the Jews from history
That was last time. And this time—
[A] nuclear Iran poses the gravest threat since Hitler to the physical survival of the Jewish people.
The last time Saddam was the first leader since “the Holocaust” to use poison gas to “exterminate” women and children, and Goldberg cited an expert on Iraq with Holocaust fears.
as a child she lived in Germany, near Bergen-Belsen. “It’s tremendously influential in your early years to live near a concentration camp,” she said. In Kurdistan, she heard echoes of the German campaign to destroy the Jews.
This time around it’s the Shoah, and the camp is different, but the lesson of destruction is the same:
Many Israelis think the Iranians are building Auschwitz… “Iran represents a threat like the Shoah,” an Israeli official who spends considerable time with the prime minister told me….
“In World War II, the Jews had no power to stop Hitler from annihilating us. Six million were slaughtered. Today, 6 million Jews live in Israel, and someone is threatening them with annihilation.“
All the talk of annihilation from Israelis. In fact, Israeli journalist Noam Sheizaf has shown here, Goldberg echoed the hysteria of one element of Israeli society to justify the idea of the U.S. going on another Middle East joyride so as to forestall the Israelis from doing so.
The views of Israeli generals and senior officials in the Defense Department on Iran are of great interest, but they should be put in the right context. There are many in Israel who don’t see Iran as an existential threat, or, more precisely, they don’t see it as a different threat than those Israel faced in the past. There are even more who think that the risk in attacking Iran is far greater then the possible benefits. Israeli Generals have a tendency for creating mass hysteria.
The seamless stoking of hysteria is the most obvious impression one gets from reading Goldberg’s two casus belli pieces in sequence: Goldberg’s paranoia exists out of time; the very same themes and lines about the destruction of Jews appear several years apart, shifted from one enemy to the other (much as the State Department 60 years ago was the anti-Semitic enemy in his book Prisoners…).
Why is Goldberg still taken so seriously? The answer has to do with the strength of the Israel lobby inside the American establishment. That is how a former Israeli soldier–Goldberg immigrated to Israel in the 80s then came back a few years later– hops from one prestige magazine to another.
Indeed, Goldberg’s core concern, which also extends seamlessly eight years from the first piece to the second one, from Iraq to Iran– is not the fear of destruction, but of Israel losing hegemonic power in the Middle East. I have held out the two most similar and important phrases in the pieces for last, the phrases that reflect this root concern:
[T]here is no disagreement that Iraq, if unchecked, will have them [nukes] soon, and a nuclear-armed Iraq would alter forever the balance of power in the Middle East”
Goldberg warned the last time. And this time:
The challenges posed by a nuclear Iran are more subtle than a direct attack, Netanyahu told me….“You’d create a great sea change in the balance of power in our area”.
Does America want to go to war to preserve Israel’s power edge in the Middle East?
For a decade, Ireland was heralded by the most ardent partisans of neo-liberal capitalism as a model to be imitated. The Celtic Tiger had a higher growth rate than the European average. Tax rate on companies had been reduced to 12.5%[2] and the rate actually paid by TNCs that had set up business there was between 3 and 4% – a CEO’s dream! Ireland’s budget deficit was nil in 2007, as was its unemployment rate in 2008. In this earthly paradise, everybody seemed to benefit. Workers had jobs (though often highly precarious), their families were busy consuming, benefiting as they were from the prevailing abundance, and both local and foreign capitalists were enjoying inordinate returns.
In October 2008, a couple of days before the Belgian government bailed out the big “Belgian” banks Fortis and Dexia with taxpayers’ money, Bruno Colmant, head of the Brussels stock exchange and professor of economics, published an op-ed in Le Soir, the French-language daily newspaper of record, stating that Belgium imperatively had to follow the Irish example and further deregulate its financial system. According to Colmant, Belgium needed to change the legal and institutional framework so as to become a platform for international capital, just like Ireland. A few short weeks later the Celtic Tiger was crying mercy.
In Ireland, financial deregulation had triggered a boom in loans to households (household indebtedness had reached 190% of GDP on the eve of the crisis), particularly in real estate, a factor that helped boost the island’s economy (the building industry, financial activities, etc.). The banking sector had experienced exponential growth with the establishment of many foreign companies[3] and the increase in Irish banks’ assets. Real estate and stock market bubbles started forming. The total amount of stockmarket capitalizations, bond issues, and bank assets was fourteen times bigger than the country’s GDP.
What could not possibly happen in such a fairytale world then happened: in September-October 2008 the card castle collapsed and the real estate and financial bubbles burst. Companies closed down or left the country, unemployment rose from 0% in 2008 to 14% in early 2010. The number of families unable to repay their creditors swiftly increased too. The whole Irish banking system teetered on the edge of bankruptcy and a panic-stricken government blindly guaranteed bank deposits for EU480 billion (that is, about three times an Irish GDP of 168 billion). It nationalized the Allied Irish Bank, the main source of financing for real estate loans, with a transfusion of EU48.5 billion (about 30% of GDP).
Exports slowed down. State revenues declined. The budget deficit rose from 14% of GDP in 2009 to 32% in 2010 (more than half of this due to the massive support given to the banks: 46 billion in equity and 31 billion in purchases of toxic assets).
At the end of 2010 the European bail-out plan with IMF participation amounted to EU85 billion in loans (including 22.5 billion from the IMF) and it is already clear that it will not be enough. In exchange, a radical cure was enforced upon the Celtic Tiger in the form of a drastic austerity plan that heavily affects households’ purchasing power, with a resultant decrease in consumption, in public expenditure on welfare, in civil servants’ salaries, in infrastructure investments (to facilitate debt repayment), and in tax revenues. On the social level, the principal measures of the austerity plan are nothing short of disastrous:
– suppression of 24,750 positions in the civil service (8% of the workforce, which would mean 350,000 positions in France);
– newly recruited employees will earn 10% less;
– reduction of social transfers resulting in lower family and unemployment allowances, a significant reduction in the health budget, a freeze on retirement pensions;
– a rise in taxes, to be borne mostly by the majority of the population, already a victim of the crisis: notably a VAT increase from 21% to 23% in 2014; creation of a real estate tax (affecting half of the households that were formerly tax-exempt);
– a EU1 reduction in the minimum hourly wage (from EU8.65 to 7.65, or 11% less).
The rates for loans to Ireland are very high: 5.7% for the IMF loan and 6.05% for “EU” loans. These loans will be used to repay banks and other financial bodies that buy bonds on the Irish debt, borrowing money from the European Central Bank at a rate of 1% – another windfall for private financiers. According to AFP, IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn claimed that it would work, though of course “it would be difficult because it is hard for people who will have to make sacrifices for the sake of budget austerity”.
Both in the streets and in parliament, opposition has been very determined. The Dail, or lower house of parliament, voted the 85 billion rescue plan by a mere 81 to 75. Far from relinquishing its neo-liberal orientation, the IMF declared that among Ireland’s priorities it is counting on the adoption of reforms to do away with structural obstacles to business, so as to support competitiveness in the coming years. “Socialist” Dominique Strauss-Kahn said he was convinced that a new government after the elections in early 2011 would not change anything: “I’m confident that even if the opposition parties, Fine Gael and Labour, are criticizing the government and the programme […], they understand the need to implement the programme.”
In short, the economic and financial liberalization aimed at attracting foreign investments and transnational financial companies has utterly failed. To add insult to the damage the population must bear as a result of such a policy, the IMF and the Irish government are persevering in the neo-liberal orientation of the past two decades and, under pressure from international finance, are subjecting the population to a structural adjustment programme similar to those imposed on Third World countries for the past three decades. Yet these decades should show what must not be done, and why it is high time to enforce a radically different logic that benefits people and not private money.
Translated by Christine Pagnoulle in collaboration with Judith Harris.
Imperial states build networks which link economic, military and political activities into a coherent mutually reinforcing system. This task is largely performed by the various institutions of the imperial state.
Thus imperial action is not always directly economic, as military action in one country or region is necessary to open or protect economic zones. Nor are all military actions decided by economic interests if the leading sector of the imperial state is decidedly militarist.
Moreover, the sequence of imperial action may vary according to the particular conditions necessary for empire building. Thus state aid may buy collaborators; military intervention may secure client regimes followed later by private investors. In other circumstances, the entry of private corporations may precede state intervention.
In either private or state economic and/or military led penetration, in furtherance of empire-building, the strategic purpose is to exploit the special economic and geopolitical features of the targeted country to create empire-centered networks. In the post Euro-centric colonial world, the privileged position of the US in its empire-centered policies, treaties, trade and military agreements is disguised and justified by an ideological gloss, which varies with time and circumstances. In the war to break-up Yugoslavia and establish client regimes, as in Kosovo, imperial ideology utilized humanitarian rhetoric. In the genocidal wars in the Middle East, anti-terrorism and anti-Islamic ideology is central. Against China, democratic and human rights rhetoric predominates. In Latin America, receding imperial power relies on democratic and anti-authoritarian rhetoric aimed at the democratically elected Chavez government.
The effectiveness of imperial ideology is in direct relation to the capacity of empire to promote viable and dynamic development alternatives to their targeted countries. By that criteria imperial ideology has had little persuasive power among target populations. The Islamophobic and anti-terrorist rhetoric has made no impact on the people of the Middle East and alienated the Islamic world. Latin America’s lucrative trade relations with the Chavist government and the decline of the US economy has undermined Washington’s ideological campaign to isolate Venezuela. The US human rights campaign against China has been totally ignored throughout the EU, Africa, Latin America, Oceana and by the 500 biggest US MNC (and even by the US Treasury busy selling treasury bonds to China to finance the ballooning US budget deficit).
The weakening influence of imperial propaganda and the declining economic leverage of Washington, means that the US imperial networks built over the past half century are being eroded or at least subject to centrifugal forces. Former fully integrated networks in Asia are now merely military bases as the economies secure greater autonomy and orient toward China and beyond. In other words the imperial networks are now being transformed into limited operations’ outposts, rather than centers for imperial economic plunder.
Imperial Networks: The Central Role of Collaborators
Empire-building is essentially a process of penetrating a country or region, establishing a privileged position and retaining control in order to secure (1) lucrative resources, markets and cheap labor (2) establish a military platform to expand into adjoining countries and regions (3) military bases to establish a chock-hold over strategic road or waterways to deny or limit access of competitors or adversaries (4) intelligence and clandestine operations against adversaries and competitors.
History has demonstrated that the lowest cost in sustaining long term, long scale imperial domination is by developing local collaborators, whether in the form of political, economic and/or military leaders operating from client regimes. Overt politico-military imperial rule results in costly wars and disruption, especially among a broad array of classes adversely affected by the imperial presence.
Formation of collaborator rulers and classes results from diverse short and long term imperial policies ranging from direct military, electoral and extra-parliamentary activities to middle to long term recruitment, training and orientation of promising young leaders via propaganda and educational programs, cultural-financial inducements, promises of political and economic backing on assuming political office and through substantial clandestine financial backing.
The most basic appeal by imperial policy-makers to the “new ruling class” in emerging client state is the opportunity to participate in an economic system tied to the imperial centers, in which local elites share economic wealth with their imperial benefactors. To secure mass support, the collaborator classes obfuscate the new forms of imperial subservience and economic exploitation by emphasizing political independence, personal freedom, economic opportunity and private consumerism.
The mechanisms for the transfer of power to an emerging client state combine imperial propaganda, financing of mass organizations and electoral parties, as well as violent coups or ‘popular uprisings’. Authoritarian bureaucratically ossified regimes relying on police controls to limit or oppose imperial expansion are “soft targets”. Selective human rights campaigns become the most effective organizational weapon to recruit activists and promote leaders for the imperial-centered new political order. Once the power transfer takes place, the former members of the political, economic and cultural elite are banned, repressed, arrested and jailed. A new homogenous political culture of competing parties embracing the imperial centered world order emerges. The first order of business beyond the political purge is the privatization and handover of the commanding heights of the economy to imperial enterprises. The client regimes proceed to provide soldiers to engage as paid mercenaries in imperial wars and to transfer military bases to imperial forces as platforms of intervention. The entire “independence charade” is accompanied by the massive dismantling of public social welfare programs (pensions, free health and education), labor codes and full employment policies. Promotion of a highly polarized class structure is the ultimate consequence of client rule. The imperial-centered economies of the client regimes, as a replica of any commonplace satrap state, is justified (or legitimated) in the name of an electoral system dubbed democratic – in fact a political system dominated by new capitalist elites and their heavily funded mass media.
Imperial centered regimes run by collaborating elites spanning the Baltic States, Central and Eastern Europe to the Balkans is the most striking example of imperial expansion in the 20th century. The break-up and take-over of the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc and its incorporation into the US led NATO alliance and the European Union resulted in imperial hubris. Washington made premature declarations of a unipolar world while Western Europe proceeded to plunder public resources, ranging from factories to real estate, exploiting cheap labor, overseas and via immigration, drawing on a formidable ‘reserve army’ to undermine living standards of unionized labor in the West.
The unity of purpose of European and US imperial regimes allowed for the peaceful joint takeover of the wealth of the new regions by private monopolies. The imperial states initially subsidized the new client regimes with large scale transfers and loans on condition that they allowed imperial firms to seize resources, real estate, land, factories, service sectors, media outlets etc. Heavily indebted states went from a sharp crises in the initial period to ‘spectacular’ growth to profound and chronic social crises with double digit unemployment in the 20 year period of client building. While worker protests emerged as wages deteriorated, unemployment soared and welfare provisions were cut, destitution spread. However the ‘new middle class’ embedded in the political and media apparatuses and in joint economic ventures are sufficiently funded by imperial financial institutions to protect their dominance.
The dynamic of imperial expansion in East, Central and Southern Europe however did not provide the impetus for strategic advance, because of the ascendancy of highly volatile financial capital and a powerful militarist caste in the Euro-American political centers. In important respects military and political expansion was no longer harnessed to economic conquest. The reverse was true: economic plunder and political dominance served as instruments for projecting military power.
Imperial Sequences: From War for Exploitation to Exploitation for War
The relations between imperial military policies and economic interests are complex and changing over time and historical context. In some circumstances, an imperial regime will invest heavily in military personnel and augment monetary expenditures to overthrow an anti-imperialist ruler and establish a client regime far beyond any state or private economic return. For example, US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, proxy wars in Somalia and Yemen have not resulted in greater profits for US multinational corporations’ nor has it enhanced private exploitation of raw materials, labor or markets. At best, imperial wars have provided profits for mercenary contractors, construction companies and related ‘war industries’ profiting through transfers from the US treasury and the exploitation of US taxpayers, mostly wage and salary earners.
In many cases, especially after the Second World War, the emerging US imperial state lavished a multi-billion dollar loan and aid program for Western Europe. The Marshall Plan forestalled anti-capitalist social upheavals and restored capitalist political dominance. This allowed for the emergence of NATO (a military alliance led and dominated by the US). Subsequently, US multi-national corporations invested in and traded with Western Europe reaping lucrative profits, once the imperial state created favorable political and economic conditions. In other words imperial state politico-military intervention preceded the rise and expansion of US multi-national capital. A myopic short term analysis of the initial post-war activity would downplay the importance of private US economic interests as the driving force of US policy. Extending the time period to the following two decades, the interplay between initial high cost state military and economic expenditures with later private high return gains provides a perfect example of how the process of imperial power operates.
The role of the imperial state as an instrument for opening, protecting and expanding private market, labor and resource exploitation corresponds to a time in which both the state and the dominant classes were primarily motivated by industrial empire building.
US directed military intervention and coups in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Chile (1973), the Dominican Republic (1965) were linked to specific imperial economic interests and corporations. For example, US and English oil corporations sought to reverse the nationalization of oil in Iran. The US, United Fruit Company opposed the agrarian reform policies in Guatemala. The major US copper and telecommunication companies supported and called for the US backed coup in Chile.
In contrast, current US military interventions and wars in the Middle East, South Asia and the Horn of Africa are not promoted by US multi-nationals. The imperial policies are promoted by militarists and Zionists embedded in the state, mass media and powerful ‘civil’ organizations. The same imperial methods (coups and wars) serve different imperial rulers and interests.
Clients, Allies and Puppet Regimes
Imperial networks involve securing a variety of complementary economic, military and political ‘resource bases’ which are both part of the imperial system and retain varying degrees of political and economic autonomy. In the dynamic earlier stages of US Empire building, from roughly the 1950’s – 1970’s, US multi-national corporations and the economy as a whole dominated the world economy. Its allies in Europe and Asia were highly dependent on US markets, financing and development. US military hegemony was reflected in a series of regional military pacts which secured almost instant support for US regional wars, military coups and the construction of military bases and naval ports on their territory. Countries were divided into ‘specializations’ which served the particular interests of the US Empire. Western Europe was a military outpost, industrial partner and ideological collaborator. Asia, primarily Japan and South Korea served as ‘frontline military outposts’, as well as industrial partners. Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines were essentially client regimes which provided raw materials as well as military bases. Singapore and Hong Kong were financial and commercial entrepots. Pakistan was a client military regime serving as a frontline pressure on China. Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Gulf mini-states, ruled by client authoritarian regimes, provided oil and military bases. Egypt and Jordan and Israel anchored imperial interests in the Middle East. Beirut served as the financial center for US, European and Middle East bankers.
Africa and Latin America including client and nationalist-populist regimes were a source of raw materials as well as markets for finished goods and cheap labor. The prolonged US-Vietnam war and Washington’s subsequent defeat eroded the power of the empire. Western Europe, Japan and South Korea’s industrial expansion challenged US industrial primacy. Latin America’s pursuit of nationalist, import – substitution policies forced US investment toward overseas manufacturing. In the Middle East nationalist movements toppled US clients in Iran and Iraq and undermined military outposts. Revolutions in Angola, Namibia, Mozambique, Algeria, Nicaragua and elsewhere curtailed Euro-American ‘open ended’ access to raw materials, at least temporarily.
The decline of the US Empire was temporarily arrested by the collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and the establishment of client regimes throughout the region. Likewise the upsurge of imperial-centered client regimes in Latin America between the mid 1970’s to the end of the 1990’s gave the appearance of an imperialist recovery. The 1990’s however was not the beginning of a repeat of the early 1950’s imperial take off: it was the “last hurrah” before a long term irreversible decline. The entire imperial political apparatus, so successful in its clandestine operations in subverting the Soviet and Eastern European regimes, played a marginal role when it came to capitalizing on the economic opportunities which ensued. Germany and other EU countries led the way in the takeover of lucrative privatized enterprises. Russian- Israeli oligarchs (seven of the top eight) seized and pillaged privatized strategic industries, banks and natural resources. The principal US beneficiaries were the banks and Wall Street firms which laundered billions of illicit earnings and collected lucrative fees from mergers, acquisitions, stock listings and other less than transparent activities. In other words, the collapse of Soviet collectivism strengthened the parasitical financial sector of the US Empire. Worse still, the assumption of a ‘unipolar world’ fostered by US ideologues, played into the hands of the militarists, who now assumed that former constraints on US military assaults on nationalists and Soviet allies had disappeared. As a result military intervention became the principle driving force in US empire building, leading to the first Iraq war, the Yugoslav and Somali invasion and the expansion of US military bases throughout the former Soviet bloc and Eastern Europe.
At the very pinnacle of US global-political and military power during the 1990’s, with all the major Latin American regimes enveloped in the empire-centered neo-liberal warp, the seeds of decay and decline set in. The economic crises of the late 1990’s, led to major uprisings and electoral defeats of practically all US clients in Latin America, spelling the decline of US imperial domination. China’s extraordinary dynamic and cumulative growth displaced US manufacturing capital and weakened US leverage over rulers in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The vast transfer of US state resources to overseas imperial adventures, military bases and the shoring up of clients and allies led to domestic decline.
The US empire, passively facing economic competitors displacing the US in vital markets and engaged in prolonged and unending wars which drained the treasury, attracted a cohort of mediocre policymakers who lacked a coherent strategy for rectifying policies and reconstructing the state to serve productive activity capable of ‘retaking markets’. Instead the policies of open-ended and unsustainable wars played into the hands of a special sub-group (sui generis) of militarists, American Zionists. They capitalized on their infiltration of strategic positions in the state, enhanced their influence in the mass media and a vast network of organized “pressure groups” to reinforce US subordination to Israel’s drive for Middle East supremacy.
The result was the total “unbalancing” of the US imperial apparatus: military action was unhinged from economic empire building. A highly influential upper caste of Zionist-militarists harnessed US military power to an economically marginal state (Israel), in perpetual hostility toward the 1.5 billion Muslim world. Equally damaging, American Zionist ideologues and policymakers promoted repressive institutions and legislation and Islamophobic ideological propaganda designed to terrorize the US population. Equally important islamophobic ideology served to justify permanent war in South Asia and the Middle East and the exorbitant military budgets, at a time of sharply deteriorating domestic socio-economic conditions. Hundreds of billions of dollars were spent unproductively as “Homeland Security” which strived in every way to recruit, train, frame and arrest Afro-American Muslim men as “terrorists”. Thousands of secret agencies with hundreds of thousands of national, state and local officials spied on US citizens who at some point may have sought to speak or act to rectify or reform the militarist-financial-Zionist centered imperialist policies.
By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the US empire could only destroy adversaries (Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan) provoke military tensions (Korean peninsula, China Sea) and undermine relations with potentially lucrative trading partners (Iran, Venezuela). Galloping authoritarianism fused with fifth column Zionist militarism to foment Islamophobic ideology. The convergence of authoritarian mediocrities, upwardly mobile knaves and fifth column tribal loyalists in the Obama regime precluded any foreseeable reversal of imperial decay.
China’s growing global economic network and dynamic advance in cutting edge applied technology in everything from alternative energy to high speed trains, stands in contrast to the Zionist-militarist infested empire of the US. The US demands on client Pakistani rulers to empty their treasury in support of US Islamic wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, stands in contrast to the $30 billion dollar Chinese investments in infrastructure, energy and electrical power and multi-billion dollar increases in trade.
US $3 billion dollar military subsidies to Israel stand in contrast to China’s multi-billion dollar investments in Iranian oil and trade agreements. US funding of wars against Islamic countries in Central and South Asia stands in contrast to Turkey’s expanding economic trade and investment agreements in the same region. China has replaced the US as the key trading partner in leading South American countries, while the US unequal “free trade” agreement (NAFTA) impoverishes Mexico. Trade between the European Union and China exceeds that with the US.
In Africa, the US subsidizes wars in Somalia and other nations in the Horn of Africa, while China signs on to multi-billion dollar investment and trade agreements, building up African infrastructure in exchange for access to raw materials. There is no question that the economic future of Africa is increasingly linked to China.
The US Empire, in contrast, is in a deadly embrace with an insignificant colonial militarist state (Israel), failed states in Yemen and Somalia, corrupt stagnant client regimes in Jordan and Egypt and the decadent rent collecting absolutist petrol-states of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. All form part of an unproductive atavistic coalition bent on retaining power via military supremacy. Yet Empires of the 21st century are built on the bases of productive economies with global networks linked to dynamic trading partners. Recognizing the economic primacy and market opportunities linked to becoming part of the Chinese global network, former or existing US clients and even puppet rulers have begun to edge away from submission to US mandates. Fundamental shifts in economic relations and political alignments have occurred throughout Latin America. Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia and other countries support Iran’s non-military nuclear program in defiance of Zionist led Washington aggression. Several countries have defied Israel-US policymakers by recognizing Palestine as a state. Trade with China surpasses trade with the US in the biggest countries in the region.
Puppet regimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan have signed major economic agreements with China, Iran and Turkey even while the US pours billions to bolster its military position. Turkey an erstwhile military client of the US-NATO command broadens its own quest for capitalist hegemony by expanding economic ties with Iran, Central Asia and the Arab-Muslim world, challenging US-Israeli military hegemony.
The US Empire still retains major clients and nearly a thousand military bases around the world. As client and puppet regimes decline, Washington increases the role and scope of extra-territorial death squad operations from 50 to 80 countries. The growing independence of regimes in the developing world is especially fueled by an economic calculus: China offers greater economic returns and less political-military interference than the US.
Washington’s imperial network is increasingly based on military ties with allies: Australia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan in the Far East and Oceana; the European Union in the West; and a smattering of Central and South American states in the South. Even here, the military allies are no longer economic dependencies: Australia and New Zealand’s principle export markets are in Asia (China). EU-China trade is growing exponentially. Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are increasingly tied by trade and investment with China … as is Pakistan and India.
Equally important new regional networks which exclude the US are growing in Latin America and Asia, creating the potential for new economic blocs. In other words the US imperial economic network constructed after World War II and amplified by the collapse of the USSR is in the process of decay, even as the military bases and treaties remain as a formidable ‘platform’ for new military interventions.
What is clear is that the military, political and ideological gains in network-building by the US around the world with the collapse of the USSR and the post-Soviet wars are not sustainable. On the contrary the overdevelopment of the ideological-military-security apparatus raised economic expectations and depleted economic resources resulting in the incapacity to exploit economic opportunities or consolidate economic networks. US funded “popular uprisings” in the Ukraine led to client regimes incapable of promoting growth. In the case of Georgia, the regime engaged in an adventurous war with Russia resulting in trade and territorial losses. It is [only] a matter of time before existing client regimes in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines and Mexico will face major upheavals, due to the precarious bases of rule by corrupt, stagnant and repressive rulers.
The process of decay of the US Empire is both cause and consequence of the challenge by rising economic powers establishing alternative centers of growth and development. Changes within countries at the periphery of the empire and growing indebtedness and trade deficits at the ‘center’ of the empire are eroding the empire. The existing US governing class, in both its financial and militarist variants show neither will nor interest in confronting the causes of decay. Instead each mutually supports the other: the financial sector lowers taxes deepening the public debt and plunders the treasury. The military caste drains the treasury in pursuit of wars and military outposts and increases the trade deficit by undermining commercial and investment undertakings.
HEBRON — Settlers in Hebron attacked a Popular Committee official on Sunday, leaving him unconscious, witnesses said.
Azmi Ash-Shuyukhi was transferred by ambulance to Hebron’s government hospital after he was beaten while leading a solidarity tour near Yatta, south of the West Bank city.
After regaining consciousness, Ash-Shuyukhi said 10 settlers punched and kicked him, leaving cuts and bruises all over his body.
Israeli soldiers were present and witnessed the attack but did not intervene, he added.
Ash-Shuyukhi is the secretary-general of the local popular committee.
Meanwhile, journalist Naser Ash-Shuyukhi said settlers punctured the tires of his car while he covered events in the area.
The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem describes attacks by settlers against Palestinians as “routine,” but says Israeli authorities “employ an undeclared policy of leniency and compromise toward Israeli civilians who harm Palestinians.”
Ramallah, West Bank–It’s a far cry from the daily checkpoints, beatings, tear-gassing and harassment that Palestinians have to go through, but today I can say that a tiny slice of the Palestinian experience became alive to me.
My arrival at Ben-Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, Israel early today was the start of a long trip down Israeli security harassment lane. After I showed my passport to an Israeli immigration agent, I was taken to a holding room, where I joined Palestinians trying to visit family and other–mostly non-white–people. Three hours later, I was taken to a separate room, where I was questioned by a bald Israeli who said he was from the Ministry of Defense.
They immediately knew that my back story of why I came to Israel was false, and I had to admit I planned on visiting the West Bank. After that came questions about my trip last year to Gaza, who I met with there, what I wanted to do in the West Bank and what the delegation I joined today was all about. Absurdly, the defense official hinted that I was suspected of “terrorism”–the term used by Israel and the U.S. to smear anyone who dissents against their inhumane policies of occupation and war. The agent also was curious to find out why I–as a Jew–was on the “Palestinian side,” working “against my homeland and my father’s,” to which I responded that Israel is not my homeland, and that I was for the human rights of all people, including Palestinians. While these questions were fired at me, pictures of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres stared down at me, as if to mock me.
I was sent back to the holding room without my passport, where I spent the rest of my time sleeping, watching Curb Your Enthusiasm (a perfect mood-lifter) and messaging Israeli blogger Didi Remez over Twitter with updates on what was going on.
Five hours later, after I though I was to be deported or detained, I was let out of the grasp of Israeli security on the condition that I not enter the Palestinian territories. As I drove to Ramallah, I passed by countless West Bank settlements–with their gleaming lights–and Palestinian villages surrounded by the illegal colonies. There was no discernible difference between Israel proper and settlement areas over the Green Line, something that I marveled at even though I knew that was the case.
And now I’m here, back in Palestine after one year. One can only be amazed that the Palestinian people remain so strong and steadfast after enduring 62 years of Israeli security harassment far worse than what I went through today.
Although Zionism typically represents itself as the solution to anti-Semitism, the truth is less flattering. In fact, hostility toward Jews is indispensable to the cause of Jewish nationalism. If anti-Semitism didn’t exist, Zionists would have to invent it. … continue
Why must Jewish organizations be and be seen as the loudest drum-beaters of all? Why can we not bring ourselves to say that military intervention is not on the table at all? Why not stash it under the table, out of sight and mount instead a diplomatic assault? – Leonard Fein, Forward
Introduction
As the White House and Congress escalate their economic sanctions and military threats against Iran, top military commanders and Pentagon officials have launched a counter-offensive, opposing a new Middle East War. While some commentators and journalists, like Chris Hedges (Truthdig, November 13, 2007), privy to this high stakes inter-elite conflict, attribute this to a White House cabal led by Vice President Cheney, a more stringent and accurate assessment puts the Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) in the center of the Iran war debate.
There is a great deal riding in this conflict – the future of the American empire as well as the balance of power in the Middle East. Equally important is the future of the US military and our already heavily constrained democratic freedoms. The outcome of the continuous and deepening confrontation between top US military officials and the Israel Firsters over US foreign policy in the Middle East has raised fundamental questions over self-determination, colonization, civilian primacy and military political intervention, empire or republic. These and related issues are far from being of academic interest only; they concern the future of the United States. … continue
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