Kenny’s Side Show | December 15, 2012
Operation Gladio never ended. It just moved around, changed names and adjusted motives and techniques.
In light of the recent Gladio style mass shootings, here’s a short background.
Operation Gladio is undisputed historical fact. Gladio was part of a post-World War II program set up by the CIA and NATO supposedly to thwart future Soviet/communist invasions or influence in Italy and Western Europe. In fact, it became a state-sponsored right-wing terrorist network, involved in false flag operations and the subversion of democracy.
The existence of Gladio was confirmed and admitted by the Italian government in 1990, after a judge, Felice Casson, discovered the network in the course of his investigations into right-wing terrorism. Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti admitted Gladio’s existence but tried to minimize its significance.
The main function of the Gladio-style groups, in the absence of Soviet invasion, seems to have been to discredit left-wing groups and politicians through the use of “the strategy of tension,” including false-flag terrorism. The strategy of tension is a concept for control and manipulation of public opinion through the use of fear, propaganda, agents provacateurs, terrorism, etc. The aim was to instill fear into the populace while framing communist and left-wing political opponents for terrorist atrocities. more
“You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple: to force … the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security.”
Perhaps it’s just a coincidence. But the U.S. elite’s history of directing and fomenting terrorist attacks against friendly populations is so extensive — indeed, so ingrained and accepted — that it calls into question the origin of every terrorist act that roils the world. With each fresh atrocity, we’re forced to ask: Was it the work of “genuine” terrorists or a “black op” by intelligence agencies — or both?
While not infallible, the ancient Latin question is still the best guide to penetrating the bloody murk of modern terrorism: Cui bono? Who benefits? Whose powers and policies are enhanced by the attack? For it is indisputable that the “strategy of tension” means power and profit for those who claim to possess the key to “security.” And from the halls of the Kremlin to the banks of the Potomac, this cynical strategy is the ruling ideology of our times. more
The swiftness with which the fear of Communism has since been transmuted following the end of the Cold War into a fear of Islamic terrorism, along with the arrival of the whole security-military- industrial-complex paraphernalia of the ‘War on Terror’ illustrates that this is almost a modus operandi of military planners. It’s as if they can’t help themselves. In light of this information, there is now a vast army of people around the world who reject the official government narrative of what happened on 9/11 and suspect there may have been US government complicity in the attacks. Opponents cry out that such a thing is unthinkable and that ‘they’ would never do such a thing. But as Ganser’s meticulously footnoted history of the Gladio armies makes clear: it may be unthinkable but it certainly isn’t unprecedented. more
One of the propaganda hooks going around is that the Connecticut school shooting is a “Black Swan” event. Who could ever have predicted it? Those aware of history maybe?
It was odd that right before the latest shooting there was an old story being promoted on how military doctors tested the effects of nerve gas, LSD and other drugs on 5,000 U.S. soldiers to gauge the effects on their brain and behavior. These experiments were not just for chemical warfare but for mind control purposes which we have to guess is still going on to this day, much refined and tested as only an unlimited supply of money can do.
The Strategy of Tension today often depends on patsies…mind controlled to one extent or another, unknowing, through drugs, suggestion, possibly microwave or some sort of electromagnetic manipulation…always there’s the element of ignorance or just downright stupidity. Ask the FBI. They find them and use them all the time in their fake domestic ‘war on terror.’
Under the provisions of the National Security Act of 1947, the CIA was established. One of the main areas investigated by the CIA was mind control. The behavior control program was motivated by Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean use of mind control techniques. The CIA originated its first program in 1950 under the name BLUEBIRD. MKULTRA officially began in 1953. In 1973, tipped off about forthcoming investigations, CIA Director Richard Helms ordered the destruction of any MKULTRA records.
The Senate Intelligence Committee did find some records during its investigation in 1976. Senator Frank Church, who led the congressional investigations of the CIA’s unlawful actions, said that the agency was “a rogue elephant” operating above the law as it plotted assassinations, illegally spied on thousands of Americans, and even drugged citizens in its effort to develop new weapons for its covert arsenal. In 1977, through a Freedom of Information Act request, 16,000 pages of mind control documents were found as part of the Agency’s financial history.
MKULTRA grew into a mammoth undertaking. The nature of the research included these specific problems.
Can we create by post-H (hypnotic) control an action contrary to an individual’s basic moral principles?
Can we “alter” a person’s personality? Can we guarantee total amnesia under any and all conditions?
Could we seize a subject and in the space of an hour by post-H control have him crash an airplane?
Can we devise a system for making unwilling subjects into willing agents and then transfer that control to untrained agency agents in the field by use of codes or identifying signs?
The focal point of MKULTRA was the use of humans as unwitting subjects [without their knowledge or consent]. The CIA sponsored numerous experiments of this kind. Regardless of a report by the CIA’s Inspector General in 1963 recommending the termination of testing on unwitting subjects, future CIA Director Richard Helms continued to advocate covert testing on the grounds that “we are less capable of staying up with the Soviet advances in this field.” On the subject of moral issues, Helms commented, “we have no answer to the moral issue.”
In the second half of the 20th century, mind control projects resulted in extensive political abuse of psychiatry. Many thousands were subjected to unethical mind control experiments by leading psychiatrists and medical schools. Mind control experimentation was not only tolerated by medical professionals, but published in psychiatric and medical journals. Dr. William Sweet participated in both brain electrode implant experiments and the injection of uranium into medical patients at Harvard University. Army doctors were involved in LSD testing at least until the late 1970’s. Subjects of LSD experiments included children as young as five years old, and brain electrodes were implanted in children as young as 11 years of age. more
Killing first graders to further the ‘strategy of tension’ seems plausible to me. It has a history and many years of refinement behind it. Even if this time wasn’t a false flag, it doesn’t mean the next one won’t be.
December 16, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, Felice Casson, Giulio Andreotti, Gladio, National Security Act of 1947, Operation Gladio, Richard Helms, Strategy of Tension |
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It matters to the corporate media in rich countries that Venezuela’s economic performance under Chavez be trashed as much as possible. The Japan based blogger, Francisco Toro, who has written relentlessly in English about Venezuela, has been rewarded by the corporate media in the US and UK with easy access to large audiences for his attacks on the Chavez government.
The US media is busily trying to scam US readers into accepting cuts to Medicare and Social Security so as not to fall off a “fiscal cliff”. In a very recent TNR article, Toro also hypes the imagined perils of discarding neoliberal lunacy. Toro wrote
“… some forecasters estimate Venezuela’s 2013 budget deficit will reach an insane 19.5 percent of GDP (consider that Greece’s deficit topped out at 15.4 percent of GDP in 2009).”
In fact, the “forecasters” Toro cites are saying – insanely – that Venezuela’s fiscal deficit will hit 20% of GDP by the end of this year which has just about arrived. The Guardian, CNN and Washington Post have also run articles claiming Venezuela’s fiscal deficit is presently 16-20% of GDP.
However, the IMF, which is hardly run by Chavistas, said as recently as October that Venezuela’s fiscal deficit would be about 7.4% of GDP by the end of this year. Without checking the IMF projections, any competent and diligent reporter should have seen that the 16-20% numbers were extremely suspect. Venezuela’s budget deficit for 2011 was 5% of GDP. Venezuela’s economy grew in 2012 and oil prices didn’t plummet, so it would have taken a jump in government spending relative to GDP in one year that is totally unprecedented in the Chavez era to drive the deficit up that high.
Additionally, the absurdity of Toro’s comparison of Venezuela to Greece is nicely illustrated by the data for the country from which Toro now blogs.
As of 2011, Japan’s fiscal deficit was 9.7% of GDP. Its gross debt to GDP ratio was 211%. The numbers for Greece are 9.4% and 170% respectively. Based on Toro’s facile analysis, we’d have to ridiculously conclude that Japan is in worse shape than Greece. Clearly, debts (and deficits) relative to GDP do not tell us if a government’s fiscal policy is sustainable.
For a competent analysis of the sustainability of the Chavez government policies see this study by Mark Weisbrot and Jake Johnson. Weisbrot also took the WAPO editorial board to task in this blog post for citing a bogus figure for Venezuela’s fiscal deficit and for other foolishness.
December 15, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Economics | United States, Venezuela, Washington Post |
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Most Americans would prefer to forget that we are approaching the first anniversary of the expulsion of U.S. military forces from Iraq. The Republican Party, which rallied behind George W. Bush to invade the country and occupy it, has suffered from a short memory relating to that misbegotten war even as it agitates for new and similar military interventions.
Much of the silence on the subject is certainly due to the fact that most Democrats and nearly all the media were also on board, though perhaps for reasons that did not completely coincide with the Bush neocons’ imperial vision. And after the war began and the occupation took on its misbegotten form under Jerry Bremer, Dan Senor, and a host of neocon acolytes brought on board to reshape the country, the saga ran on and on. As Iraq broke down into its constituent parts due to Bremer’s inept proconsulship, a development that might normally lead to a rethink of the entire project, Pentagon-based neoconservatives instead regrouped, doubled down and contrived the 2007 “surge” to fix things. That the surge was a poorly conceived and executed military dead end and a complete failure to do anything but deepen the divisions within Iraq seemed irrelevant, political partisanship inevitably rushing in to interpret it as a success to provide cover for the foolish politicians, generals and bureaucrats in Washington who had conceived it. As recently as the Republican presidential debates earlier this year the “surge” in Iraq was cited by several candidates as a litmus test for those who believe in the “right kind” of foreign policy. Those who did not believe in the myth of the surge as a subset of American Exceptionalism were outside the pale, most notably Representative Ron Paul.
Iraq, correctly labeled the “worst mistake in American history,” has to be remembered because of what it should have taught about Washington’s false perception of the U.S. vis-a-vis the rest of the world. One of America’s poorest secretaries of state of all time, Madeleine Albright, once said that the U.S. is the only “necessary nation” because it “sees far.” She could have added that it sees far though it frequently doesn’t understand what it is seeing, but that would have required some introspection on her part. Albright’s ignorance and hubris have unfortunately been embraced and even expanded upon by her equally clueless successors and the presidencies that they represented. Iraq should be an antidote to such thinking, a prime lesson in what is wrong with the United States when its blunders its way overseas as the self-proclaimed arbiter of the destinies of billions of people.
Everyone but the “realist” and largely traditional conservative and libertarian minority that opposed the Iraq venture from day one has turned out to be dead wrong about the war and many continued to be wrong even when the U.S. military was eventually forced to leave the country by the Baghdad government. The Iraq war was born from a series of lies.
The United States invaded Iraq in 2003 based on two alleged threats as defined by the Bush administration and Congress. First, it was claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and also delivery systems that would enable it to strike directly against the United States. Second, it was frequently argued that Iraq had somehow been involved in 9/11 through its intelligence services. Both contentions were completely false, were known by many in the White House to be fraudulent, and, in some cases, were bolstered by evidence that was itself fabricated or known to be incorrect. Many in the Pentagon and CIA knew that the case being made for war was essentially bogus and was being contrived to satisfy United Nations requirements for armed intervention. Though there were a couple of principled resignations from the State Department, almost everyone in the bureaucracy went along with the fraud.
Digging deeper there were other uncited reasons for going to war and some led back to Israel and its lobby. All of the most passionate cheerleaders for war were also passionate about protecting Israel. Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had been paying money to the families of Palestinians killed by Israel and there was a perception that he was a potential military threat. When the U.S. took over control in Baghdad one of the first projects to be considered was a pipeline to move Iraqi oil to the Israeli port of Haifa.
Fast forward eight years, to the end of the U.S. military presence. The neocons continued to see a strategic objective in the shambles that they had made. In an op-ed in the Washington Post on the impending U.S. departure from Iraq one year ago, neocons Kimberly and Fred Kagan delusionally entertained five “American core interests” in the region. They were: that Iraq should continue to be one unified state; that there should be no al-Qaeda on its soil; that Baghdad abides by its international responsibilities; that Iraq should contain Iran; and that the al-Maliki government should accept U.S. “commitment” to the region. As the Kagans are first and foremost apologists for Israel, it should be observed that Iraq’s “international responsibilities” would be understood as referring to the expectation that Baghdad not be hostile to Tel Aviv.
But looking back a bit, in 2003 Iraq was a good deal more unified and stable than it is today; there was no al-Qaeda or other terrorist presence; Saddam generally abided by a sanctions regime imposed by the U.N.; and Iraq was the principal Arab front line state restraining Iran’s ambitions. Then, as now, the U.S. was clearly “committed” to the region through the overwhelming presence of its armed forces and one should add parenthetically that Iraq in no way threatened the United States, or anyone else. It was precisely the U.S. invasion that dismantled the Iraqi nation state, introduced al-Qaeda to the country, wrecked the nation’s economy, and brought into power a group of Shi’a leaders who are anti-democratic and adhere much closer to Tehran and Syria than to Washington. Nor are they very friendly to Israel, quite the contrary, and there is no oil pipeline. So none of the “core interests” sought by the United States as defined by neocon doctrine have actually been achieved, or, rather, they have actually been reversed due to the invasion and occupation by the United States arranged and carried out by the Pentagon neoconservatives.
And then there is the cost. The U.S. lost nearly 5,000 soldiers killed plus 35,000 more wounded while the documented Iraqi dead number more than 110,000, though the actual total is almost certainly much, much higher, perhaps exceeding one million. Ancient Christian communities in Iraq have all but disappeared. Columbia economist Joseph Stiglitz has estimated that the total cost of the war will be in the $5 trillion plus range when all the bills are finally paid. The U.S. economy has suffered grave and possibly fatal damage as a result of a war that need not have taken place.
The lesson to be learned from Iraq is actually quite simple. Military intervention in a foreign land unless a genuine vital interest is at stake is a fool’s errand due to the unforeseen consequences that develop from any war. And when intervention is actually necessary (hard to imagine what those circumstances would be) it must have an exit strategy that starts almost immediately. Remembering the government chicanery that led to the events of 2003 through 2011 means that the lies that are currently being floated to justify regime change in both Syria and Iran by the same neocons who produced the Iraq debacle should be treated with extreme skepticism and summarily rejected. Iraq also provides the insights that enable one to judge the Afghanistan enterprise for what it really is: a failure now just as it will be five years from now at far greater cost in lives and treasure for Afghans and Americans alike. If the United States cannot learn from the experience of Iraq it is doomed to repeatedly fail in similar endeavors until the last soldier comes home in a body bag and the last dollar is spent, leaving behind an empty treasury and an impoverished American people.
Philip Giraldi is the executive director of the Council for the National Interest and a recognized authority on international security and counterterrorism issues.
Source
December 15, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Iraq, Iraq War, Israel, Saddam Hussein, United States |
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While Venezuela’s president Hugo Chávez is fighting for his life in Cuba, the liberal press of both sides of the Atlantic (e.g., El Pais ) has not stopped trashing his government. The significance of his victory (12 points ahead of his contender) has yet to be analyzed properly, with evidence. It is remarkable that Chávez would win, sick with cancer, outgunned by the local and international media (think of Syriza’s Greece election) and, rarely acknowledged, an electoral map extremely biased towards the middle and upper classes, with geographical barriers and difficult access to Ids for members of the working classes.
One of the main factors for the popularity of the Chávez Government and its landslide victory in the re-election results of October 2012, is the reduction of poverty, made possible because the government took back control of the national petroleum company PDVSA, and has used the abundant oil revenues, not for benefit of a small class of rentiers as previous governments had done, but to build needed infrastructure and invest in the social services that Venezuelans so sorely needed. During the last ten years, the government has increased social spending by 60.6%, a total of $772 billion [i].
Poverty is not defined solely by lack of income nor is health defined as the lack of illness. Both are correlated and both are multi-factorial, that is, determined by a series of social processes. To make a more objective assessment of the real progress achieved by the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela during the last 13 years it is essential to review some of the key available data on the social determinants of health and poverty: education, inequality, jobs and income, health care, food security and social support and services.
With regard to these social determinants of health indicators, Venezuela is now the country in the region with the lowest inequality level (measured by the Gini Coefficient) having reduced inequality by 54%, poverty by 44%. Poverty has been reduced from 70.8% (1996) to 21% (2010). And extreme poverty reduced from 40% (1996) to a very low level of 7.3% (2010). About 20 million people have benefited from anti-poverty programs, called “Misiones” (Up to now, 2.1 million elderly people have received old-age pensions – that is 66% of the population while only 387,000 received pensions before the current government.
Education is a key determinant of both health and poverty and the Bolivarian government has placed a particular emphasis on education allotting it more than 6% of GDP. UNESCO has recognized that illiteracy been eliminated, furthermore, Venezuela is the 3rd most literate country in the region. There is tuition free education from daycare to university; 72% of children attend public daycare and 85% of school age children attend school. There are thousands of new or refurbished schools, including 10 new universities. The country places 2nd in Latin America and 5th in the world with the greatest proportions of university students. In fact, 1 out of every 3 Venezuelans are enrolled in some educational program. [ii] . It is also a great achievement that Venezuela is now tied with Finland as the 5th happiest country in the world [iii] .
Before the Chavez government in 1998, 21% of the population was malnourished. Venezuela now has established a network of subsidized food distribution including grocery stores and supermarkets. While 90% of the food was imported in 1980, today this is less than 30%. Misión Agro-Venezuela has given out 454,238 credits to rural producers and 39,000 rural producers have received credit in 2012 alone. Five million Venezuelan receive free food, four million of them are children in schools and 6,000 food kitchens feed 900,000 people. The agrarian reform and policies to help agricultural producers have increased domestic food supply. The results of all these food security measures is that today malnourishment is only 5%, and child malnutrition which was 7.7% in 1990 today is at 2.9%. This is an impressive health achievement by any standard.
Some of the most important available data on health care and public health are the following [iv], [v], [vi]:
*infant mortality dropped from 25 per 1000 (1990) to only 13/1000 (2010);
*An outstanding 96% of the population now has access to clean water (one of the goals of the revolution);
*In 1998, there were 18 doctors per 10,000 inhabitants, currently there are 58, and the public health system has about 95,000 physicians;
*It took four decades for previous governments to build 5,081 clinics, but in just 13 years the Bolivarian government built 13,721 (a 169.6% increase);
*Barrio Adentro (i.e., primary care program with the help of more than 8,300 Cuban doctors) has saved approximately 1.4 million lives in 7,000 clinics and has given 500 million consultations;
*In 2011 alone, 67,000 Venezuelans received free high cost medicines for 139 pathological conditions including cancer, hepatitis, osteoporosis, schizophrenia, and others; there are now 34 centers for addictions,
*In 6 years 19,840 homeless have been assisted through a special program; and there are practically no children living on the streets.
*Venezuela now has the largest intensive care unit in the region.
*A network of public drugstores sell subsidized medicines in 127 stores with savings of 34-40%.
*51,000 people have been treated in Cuba for specialized eye treatment and the eye care program “Mision Milagro”; has restored sight to 1.5 million Venezuelans.
An example of how the government has tried to respond in a timely fashion to the real needs of its people is the situation that occurred in 2011 when heavy tropical rains left 100,000 people homeless. They were immediately sheltered temporarily in all manner of public buildings and hotels and, in one and a half years, the government built 250,000 houses. The government has obviously not eradicated all social ills, but its people do recognize that, despite any shortcomings and mistakes, it is a government that is on their side, trying to use its resources to meet their needs. Part of this equation is the intense political participation that the Venezuelan democracy stands for, that includes 30,000 communal councils, which determine local social needs and oversee their satisfaction and allows the people to be protagonists of the changes they demand.[vii]
The Venezuelan economy has low debts, high petroleum reserves and high savings, yet Western economists that oppose President Chávez repeat ad nauseam that the Venezuelan economy is not “sustainable” and predict its demise when the oil revenues stop. Ironically they do not hurl these dire predictions to other oil economies such as Canada or Saudi Arabia. They conveniently ignore that Venezuela’s oil reserves of 500 billion barrels of oil is the largest in the world and consider the social investment of oil revenues a waste or futile endeavor. However, these past 13 years, the Bolivarian government has been building up an industrial and agricultural infrastructure that 40 years of previous governments had neglected and its economy continues to get stronger even in the face of a global financial crisis.
An indication of the increasing diversification of the economy is the fact that the State now obtains almost as much revenue from tax collection as from the sale of oil, since it strengthened its capacity for tax collection and wealth redistribution.
Economic milestones these last ten years include reduction in unemployment from 11.3% to 7.7%; doubling the number of people receiving social insurance benefits, and the flourishing of cooperatives has strengthened local endogenous economies. In general, the Venezuelan economy has grown 47.4% in ten years, that is, 4.3% per annum. [viii].
Today many European countries would look jealously at these figures. Economists who studied the Venezuelan economy in detail for years indicate that, “The predictions of economic collapse, balance of payments or debt crises and other gloomy prognostications, as well as many economic forecasts along the way, have repeatedly proven wrong… Venezuela’s current economic growth is sustainable and could continue at the current pace or higher for many years.” [ix] .
According to Global Finance and the CIA World Factbook, the Venezuelan economy presents the following indicators [x]: unemployment rate of 8%; 45.5% government (public) debt as a percent of GDP (by contrast the European Union debt/GDP is 82.5%); and a real GDP growth: GDP per capita is $13,070.
In 2011, the Venezuelan economy defied most forecasts by growing 4.2 percent, and was up 5.6 percent in the first half of 2012. It has a debt-to-GDP ratio comfortably below the U.S. and the UK, and stronger than European countries; an inflation rate, an endemic problem during many decades, that has fallen to a four-year low, or 13.7%, over the most recent 2012 quarter. Even The Wall Street Journal reports that Venezuela’s stock exchange is by far the best-performing stock market in the world, reaching an all-time high in October 2012, and Venezuela’s bonds are some of the best performers in emerging markets.
Hugo Chavez’s victory had an impact around the world as he is recognized as having spearheaded radical change not only in his own country but in all Latin America where progressive governments have also been elected, thereby reshaping the global order. The victory was even more significant considering the enormous financial and strategic help that the USA agencies and allies gave to the opposition parties and media. Since 2002, Washington channeled $100 million to opposition groups in Venezuela and this election year alone, distributed US$ 40-50 million there. [xi] But the Venezuelan people disregarded the barrage of propaganda unleashed against the president by the media that is 95% privately owned and anti-Chavez. [xii]. The tide of progressive change in the region has started to build the infrastructure for the first truly independent South America with political integration organizations such as Bank of the South, CELAC, ALBA, PETROSUR, PETROCARIBE, UNASUR, MERCOSUR, TELESUR and thus have demonstrated to the rest of the world that there are, after all, economic and social alternatives in the 21st century [xiii]. Following a different model of development from that of global capitalism in sharp contrast to Europe, debt levels across Latin America are low and falling.
The changes in Venezuela are not abstract. The government of President Chávez has significantly improved the living conditions of Venezuelans and engaged them in dynamic political participation to achieve it [xiv]. This new model of socialist development has had a phenomenal impact all over Latin America, including Colombia of late, and the progressive left of center governments that are now the majority in the region see in Venezuela the catalyst that that has brought more democracy, national sovereignty and economic and social progress to the region [xv]. No amount of neoliberal rhetoric can dispute these facts. Dozens of opinionated experts can go on forever on whether the Bolivarian Revolution is or is not socialist, whether it is revolutionary or reformist (it is likely to be both ), yet at the end of the day these substantial achievements remain. This is what infuriates its opponents the most both inside Venezuela and most notably, from neocolonialist countries. The “objective” and “empiricist” The Economist will not publicize this data, preferring to predict once again the imminent collapse of the Venezuelan economy and El Pais, in Spain, would rather have one of the architects of the Caracazo (the slaughter of 3000 people in Caracas protesting the austerity measures of 1989), the minister of finance of the former government Moises Naim, go on with his anti-Chávez obsession. But none of them can dispute that the UN Human Development Index situates Venezuela in place #61 out of 176 countries having increased 7 places in 10 years.
And that is one more reason why Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution will survive Venezuela’s Socialist leader.
Carles Muntaner is Professor of Nursing, Public Health and Psychiatry at the University of Toronto. He has been working on the public health aspects of the Bolivarian Revolution for more than a decade including Muntaner C, Chung H, Mahmood Q and Armada F. “History Is Not Over. The Bolivarian Revolution, Barrio Adentro and Health Care in Venezuela.” In T Ponniah and J Eastwood The Revolution in Venezuela. Harvard: HUP, 2011
María Páez Victor is a Venezuelan sociologist, specializing in health and medicine.
Joan Benach is a professor of Public Health at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. He has collaborated in a number of studies on the public health policies of the Bolivarian Revolution.
~~~
[i] Páez Victor, Maria. “Why Do Venezuelan Women Vote for Chavez?” Counterpunch, 24 April 2012
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/24/why-do-venezuelan-women-vote-for-chavez/print
[ii] Venezuela en Noticias, Venezuela en Noticias <venezuelaennoticias@minci.gob.ve> Venezuela en Noticias, Venezuela en Noticias venezuelaennoticias@minci.gob.ve
[iii] Gallup Poll 2010
[iv] Muntaner C, Chung H, Mahmood Q and Armada F. “History Is Not Over. The Bolivarian Revolution, Barrio Adentro and Health Care in Venezuela.” In T Ponniah and J Eastwood The Revolution in Venezuela. Harvard: HUP, 2011 pp 225-256; see also 4, Muntaner et al 2011, 5, Armada et al 2009; 6, Zakrison et al 2012
[v] Armada, F., Muntaner, C., & Navarro, V. (2001). “Health and social security reforms in Latin America: The convergence of the world health organization, the world bank, and transnational corporations.” International Journal of Health Services, 31(4), 729-768.
[vi] Zakrison TL, Armada F, Rai N, Muntaner C. ”The politics of avoidable blindness in Latin America–surgery, solidarity, and solutions: the case of Misión Milagro.”Int J Health Serv. 2012;42(3):425-37.
[vii] Ismi, Asad. “The Bolivarian Revolution Gives Real Power to the People.” The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Monitor , December 2009/January.http://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/latin-american-revolution-part-iv
[viii] Carmona, Adrián. “Algunos datos sobre Venezuela”, Rebelión, March 2012
[ix] Weisbrot, Mark and Johnston, Jake. “Venezuela’s Economic Recovery: Is It Sustainable?” Center for Economic and Policy Research, Washington, D.C., September 2012.
[x] Hunziker , Robert. “Venezuela and the Wonders of Equality”. October 15th, 2012
[xi] Golinger, Eva. “US$20 million for the Venezuelan Opposition in 2012”, http://www.chavezcode.com/2011/08/us-20-million-for-venezuelan-opposition.html
[xii] Páez Victor, Maria. “Chavez wins Over Powerful Foreign Conglomerate Against Him”, Periódico América Latina, 11 October, 2012
[xiii] Milne, Seumas. “The Chávez Victory Will be Felt Far Beyond Latin America” , Associate Editor, The Guardian, October 9, 2012:
[xiv] Alvarado, Carlos, César Arismendi, Francisco Armada, Gustavo Bergonzoli, Radamés Borroto, Pedro Luis Castellanos, Arachu Castro, Pablo Feal, José Manuel García, Renato d´A. Gusmão, Silvino Hernández, María Esperanza Martínez, Edgar Medina, Wolfram Metzger, Carles Muntaner, Aldo Muñoz, Standard Núñez, Juan Carlos Pérez, and Sarai Vivas. 2006. “Mission Barrio Adentro: The Right to Health and Social Inclusion in Venezuela”. Caracas: PAHO/Venezuela.
[xv] Weisbrot, Mark.”Why Chávez Was Re-elected”. New York Times. Oct 10th 2012
December 14, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Economics, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | Bolivarian Revolution, Cuban medical internationalism, Gini Coefficient, Hugo Chávez, Latin America, Mission Barrio Adentro, Venezuela |
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The New York Times updates readers today (12/13/12) on the health status of left-wing Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, and the political implications for his country. But the paper starts out by suggesting that the people who keep electing him must have some kind of problem.
According to the Times’ William Neuman, life in Venezuela is pretty dismal. Christmas tree shipments were fouled up, a government ice cream factory closed down, and “all of this happened while the economy was growing — before the slowdown many predict next year.”
He writes:
Such frustrations are typical in Venezuela, for rich and poor alike, and yet President Hugo Chávez has managed to stay in office for nearly 14 years, winning over a significant majority of the public with his outsize personality, his free-spending of state resources and his ability to convince Venezuelans that the Socialist revolution he envisions will make their lives better.
So people believe that, somewhere in the future, life will get better thanks to Chávez? But it’s already happened for the majority of Venezuelans. As Mark Weisbrot wrote (Guardian, 10/3/12):
Since 2004, when the government gained control over the oil industry and the economy had recovered from the devastating, extra-legal attempts to overthrow it (including the 2002 US-backed military coup and oil strike of 2002-2003), poverty has been cut in half and extreme poverty by 70%. And this measures only cash income. Millions have access to healthcare for the first time, and college enrolment has doubled, with free tuition for many students. Inequality has also been considerably reduced. By contrast, the two decades that preceded Chávez amount to one of the worst economic failures in Latin America, with real income per person actually falling by 14% between 1980 and 1998.
It’s not that Neuman is unaware of this. Deep in the piece– after saying that “Mr. Chávez’s own record is mixed”– he admits, in between all the hand-waving and caveats, that maybe there’s something that explains Chávez’s popularity:
He has used price controls to make food affordable for the poor, but that has contributed to shortages in basic goods. He created a popular program of neighborhood clinics often staffed by Cuban doctors, but hospitals frequently lack basic equipment.
There is no doubt that living conditions have improved for the poor under Mr. Chávez, and that is the greatest source of his popularity. But the improvements came at a time when high oil prices were pouring money into the country and fueling economic growth, which some analysts say would have led to similar improvements under many leaders, even some with more market-friendly policies.
So life is better for the vast majority of the country. That’s a far cry from the point he stressed at the beginning, that Chávez has somehow sold people on the questionable idea that the outlook would someday improve. The Times has to downplay that reality so you’ll take away the message: things are bad there. Or, if they’re not, someone else with superior, “market-friendly policies” could have achieved the same results, if not better.
December 14, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Economics, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Hugo Chávez, Latin America, Mark Weisbrot, New York Times, Peter Hart, Venezuela |
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U.S. Courts Have Denied Recourse
NEW YORK – The American Civil Liberties Union and Yale Law School’s Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic today filed a petition against the United States with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IAHCR) for the unlawful detention and torture of José Padilla, a U.S. citizen, whom the United States detained and interrogated for four years.
The petition was filed by Padilla’s mother, Estella Lebron, on her own and on her son’s behalf. Padilla and Lebron had previously filed federal lawsuits – since dismissed – against current and former government officials for their roles in Padilla’s torture and other abuse.
The petition is an international complaint asking the IACHR, which is an independent human rights body of the Organization of American States, to conduct a full investigation into the human rights violations suffered by Padilla; to find that his mistreatment violated the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man; and to recommend that the United States publicly acknowledge the violations and apologize for its unlawful conduct.
“The U.S. justice system denied a day in court to a U.S. citizen who was arrested and then tortured on U.S. soil by his own government,” said Steven Watt, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Human Rights Program. “The U.S. has historically been a leader in ensuring access to justice for human rights violations around the world, but it has effectively closed the courtroom door to all victims and survivors of the Bush administration’s torture regime. Denied redress in U.S. courts, torture survivors like Padilla are now left with no choice but to turn to international justice.”
In 2002, President Bush declared Padilla an “enemy combatant” and ordered him to be placed in military custody. U.S. officials seized Padilla from a civilian jail in New York and secretly transported him to the Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, S.C., where they held him for 43 months without charge. Interrogators subjected Padilla to torture and other egregious forms of abuse, including forcing him into stress positions for hours on end, punching him, depriving him of sleep and threatening him with further torture, “extraordinary rendition” and death.
“For more than a decade, Estela Lebron has lived with the terrible knowledge that her own government tortured her son, but there has never been any official acknowledgement, let alone an apology,” said Alaina Varvaloucas, a student with Yale’s Lowenstein Clinic who worked on preparing the petition. “The pain and indignity of that betrayal continue to this day.”
For the first 21 months of his captivity, Padilla was held incommunicado, without access to lawyers and his family.
“No human being deserves what happened to our family, and I will continue to work for my son and for justice as long as I’m breathing. As a mother, I want to be sure this never happens to anyone else,” said Lebron. “This petition may be my last chance.”
Today’s petition filed with the IACHR is available at:
www.aclu.org/files/assets/iachr_padilla_petition.pdf
Information on the dismissed federal lawsuit against U.S. officials is available at:
www.aclu.org/national-security/padilla-v-rumsfeld
CONTACT: (212) 549-2666
December 11, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | American Civil Liberties Union, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, José Padilla, Organization of American States, Padilla, Steven Watt, United States |
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On December 9th Mexican authorities released 56 of the 69 people who had been in detention for more than a week on suspicion of “attacking public peace” during protests in Mexico City against the inauguration of President Enrique Peña Nieto. A total of 106 people were reportedly arrested on a day which included violent confrontations between police and protesters and widespread destruction of property [see Update #1154], but 28 were quickly released. Judge María del Carmen Mora Brito of the Federal District (DF, Mexico City) court system ordered the December 9th releases after “analyzing videos, testimonies and expert witnesses’ reports,” the DF Superior Court of Justice announced in a communiqué. (Europa Press 12/10/12)
The judge’s action followed a week of demonstrations against police repression and charges that agents had repeatedly attacked, beaten and arrested peaceful protesters and bystanders while failing to arrest the people who had been engaged in vandalism. There were also accusations that agents provocateurs had infiltrated the protests. Complaints about the police seemed to be supported by videos that circulated widely on the internet. One, a compilation by the student video collective Imágenes En Rebeldía, appears to show unprovoked police attacks, arrests of nonviolent protesters, and men dressed in civilian clothes and armed with crowbars and chains standing and walking among uniformed federal police agents behind metal barriers around the Chamber of Deputies building.
On December 6th the DF Human Rights Commission (CDHDF) reported that the DF police had arrested at least 22 people arbitrarily and that four people showed signs of having been tortured. A total of 88 people claimed to have been arrested without justification, the governmental commission said; 15 youths were charged with taking part in vandalism on Juárez Avenue even though the vandalism occurred after the time of their arrests. Among the people arrested on December 1rst was Mircea Topolenau, a Romanian photographer covering the events for a magazine. CDHDF president Luis González Placencia noted that his organization was only reporting actions by the DF police and that it was up to the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) to investigate alleged abuses by the federal police. (La Jornada (Mexico) 12/7/12)
Two protesters were seriously injured during the December 1rst protests. Drama teacher Francisco Kuykendall Leal was hit by a tear gas canister and was hospitalized with cranial injuries. He is an active supporter of The Other Campaign, a political movement inspired by the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) [see Update #832]. Uriel Sandoval Díaz, a student at the Autonomous University of Mexico City (UACM), lost an eye and suffered fractures when he was hit by a rubber bullet. “This struggle won’t end until poverty ends,” Uriel said from a wheelchair as he was being released from the General Hospital on December 6th. “An eye is nothing [when] every day thousands of human beings have nothing to eat.” (Kaos en la Red 12/4/12 from Desinformémonos; Milenio (Mexico) 12/7/12)
In related news, an online petition has been started calling on Harvard University president Drew Gilpin Faust to withdraw the offer of a fellowship at the university’s John F. Kennedy School of Government to outgoing president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (2006-2012). Tens of thousands of Mexicans have died in the militarized “war on drugs” Calderón initiated soon after he took office in December 2006. The petition is at http://www.change.org/petitions/harvard-university-president-faust-deny-outgoing-mexican-president-felipe-calderon-employment-at-harvard
December 11, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | Enrique Peña Nieto, Felipe Calderón, Human rights, La Jornada, Mexico, Party of the Democratic Revolution, Zapatista National Liberation Army |
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Once again world public opinion faces a most bizarre political event: an alliance between political forces on the extreme Right and the Left, including collaboration between NATO regimes and Marxist sects. The apparent ‘unity of opposites’ is a response to alleged policy and institutional changes made by center-left and center-right regimes, which adversely affect both economic and political elites as well as the popular sectors.
The circumstances, under which this unholy alliance takes place, vary according to the type of regime, its policies and the class orientation of the opposition. The best way to analyze the left-right alliance is to examine the cases of Egypt and Argentina.
Egypt: The Alliance between Mubarak-Appointed Judges, Secular Liberals, Leftist Intellectuals and Disenchanted Workers
To understand the alliance between the corrupt remnants of the Mubarak state apparatus and their former political victims from the center-left and secular-right, it is essential to examine the political context, which has evolved since the overthrow of the Mubarak dictatorship in February 2011.
While Islamist and secular democratic forces played a major role in mobilizing millions of Egyptians in ousting the hated US-Israeli client, Hosni Mubarak, it was the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and their fundamentalist rivals, the Salafis, who won the majority of votes in the subsequent elections and formed the first democratically-elected government in Egypt.[i] In the beginning, the Muslim Brotherhood was forced to share power with the ‘transitional military junta’, which had seized power immediately after the ouster of Mubarak. Subsequently President Mohamed Morsi, from the Muslim Brotherhood, convoked elections to a constituent assembly and nominated a commission to write a new constitution. This was backed by a majority of the newly-elected Egyptian parliament. Reflecting the Muslim Brotherhood’s electoral victory, the constitutional commission was dominated by its supporters. Many secular liberals and leftists rejected their minority status in the process.
Aside from his work on the constitutional front, Morsi negotiated a financial loan package of $4.5 billion with the IMF, $5 billion from the EU and an additional one billion dollars in US aid. These aid agreements were conditional on President Morsi implementing ‘free market’ policies, including an ‘open-door’ to foreign investment, ending food and fuel price subsidies to the poor and maintaining the humiliating Mubarak-era treaty with Israel, which included Egypt’s participation in the brutal blockade of Gaza.
While the despised US-Israel-backed dictator Hosni Mubarak may have been ousted from power and a new democratically-elected legislature had taken office (temporarily) along with President Morsi, Mubarak supporters continued to dominate key positions in the ministries, the entire judiciary, military and police. Thus powerfully ensconced, the Mubarak elite strove in every way to undermine emerging democratic institutions and processes. The Minister of Defense, Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, shielded the police officials and paramilitary forces responsible for the jailing, torture and murder of thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators. Mubarak-appointed judges arbitrarily disqualified legislative and presidential candidates, invalidated democratic elections and even ordered the closing of parliament. They then moved to outlaw the elected constituent assembly and the commission set-up to draft the new Egyptian constitution.
In other words, Mubarakites, embedded in the state apparatus, were engaged in an institutional coup d’etat to retain power, destabilize and paralyze the democratically-elected Morsi regime and create political disorder, propitious for a return to their dictatorial rule.
It was the Mubarak-appointed judges’ power-grab that eliminated the separation of powers by imposing arbitrary judicial decisions and powers over and above the hard-won electoral rights of Egyptian citizens and their elected legislature. The judges’ self-proclaimed assumption of legislative and executive supremacy was a direct assault on the integrity of the emerging democratic process.
When President Morsi finally moved to counter the Mubarak-allied judges’ dismissal of legitimately-elected bodies by assuming temporary emergency powers, these judges and their cheerleaders in the Western media accused him of subverting democracy and violating the ‘independence’ of the judiciary. The Western ‘liberal’ outcry at Morsi’s so-called ‘power grab’ is laughable given the fact that they ignored the naked ‘power grab’ of the judges when they dismissed Egypt’s parliament, its free elections and the writing of its new constitution under the leadership of Egypt’s new president. These cries of ‘democracy’ ring hollow from a judiciary, which had shamelessly legalized countless murders, tortures and dictatorial acts committed by Mubarak for over 30 years.
The judges’ democratic posturing and cries of injustice were accompanied by theatrical walkouts and protests aimed at mobilizing public opinion. Apart from a few thousand die-hard Mubarak holdovers, these judges managed to attract very little support, until secular liberals, leftists, trade unionists and sectors of the unemployed decided to intervene and try to win in the streets what they lost at the ballot box.
The popular protests, in contrast to the judges’ defense of Mubarak-era privilege and their blatant power grab, was based on Morsi’s failure to tackle the problems of growing unemployment and plummeting income, as well as his acceptance of IMF demands to end public subsidies for the poor. The secular-liberals joined forces with Mubarak-era judges in their clamor against ‘authoritarianism’ and pushed their own secular agenda against the Islamist tendencies in the regime and in the drawing up of the constitution. Pro-democracy youth sought to exploit the legislative vacuum created when the right-wing judges dismissed the parliament and put forward a vague notion of ‘alternative democracy’ … presumably one which would exclude the votes of the Islamist majority. The trade unions, which had led numerous strikes after the fall of Mubarak and remain a force among factory workers, joined the protests against Morsi, rejecting his embrace of the corporate elite. Even some Islamist groups, disgusted with Morsi’s accommodation with Israel and the US, also joined and took to the streets.
The US and the EU took advantage of the judges’ protest to step in and warn Morsi to abide to a ‘power sharing’ agreement with the Mubarak officials and the military or lose financial aid.
Washington has been playing a clever ‘two track policy’: They support Morsi when he implements a neo-liberal ‘free market’ domestic agenda using the Muslim Brotherhood networks to contain and limit popular protest among Egypt’s poor while threatening US aid if he vacillates on Mubarak-era agreements with Israel to starve Gaza. The White House insists that Morsi continue supplying cheap gas to Tel Aviv, as well as backing ongoing and future NATO wars against Syria and Iran. But the US and EU also want to keep the old reliable Mubarak power centers in place as a check and veto on Morsi in case a powerful anti-Zionist, populist urban movement pressures his regime to backtrack on the IMF program and the hated treaty with Israel.
The constitution, presented by the commission, is a compromise between Islamists, neo-liberals and democratic electoralists. This constitution undermines the judges’ power grab and allows the Morsi government to prosecute or fire the corrupt Mubarak-era officials; it guarantees the primacy of private, including foreign, property; it privileges Islamic law and provides ‘space’ and possibilities for Islamist leaders to restrict the rights of Egyptian women and religious minorities, notably the Coptic Christians.
A democratic vote on the constitutional referendum will test the strength of the pro and anti-government forces. A boycott by secular, liberal and populist-democratic forces will only demonstrate their weakness and strengthen the reactionary coup-makers embedded among the Mubarak-era officials in judiciary, police, military and civilian bureaucracy.
The Left and democratic-secular movements and leaders have formed an opportunistic, de-facto alliance with the Mubarak elite: a marriage of ‘the police club’ with its former victims, ‘the clubbed democrats’ of the recent past. The progressives overlook the danger of the judges’ creeping coup, in their blind effort to undermine the Muslim Brotherhood and the Morsi regime: It’s one thing to oppose Morsi’s reactionary agenda and the anti-popular votes of a reactionary legislature; it’s something totally different to promote the ouster of a democratically-elected legislature by hold-over judges pushing for the return of despotism. Undermining the democratic process will not only adversely affect President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood but also the democratic opposition. The prime beneficiaries will be the right-wing forces encrusted in the State.
The anti-Muslim Brotherhood demonstrators, who are the clear losers in democratic elections and a minority in the country, burned and trashed the offices and meeting places of the Brotherhood and assaulted their supporters in the worst traditions of the Mubarak era. The self-styled ‘pro-democracy’ activists’ assaults on the Presidential palace and their rejection of Morsi’s call for dialogue has opened the way for the return of military rule. The military command’s thinly veiled threat was evident in their pronouncement that they would intervene with force to maintain order and protect the public if violence continues. The coincidence of prolonged street disorder and assaults on electoral politics with military overtures to take power have a distinct smell of a barnyard confabulation. The right-left alliance makes it difficult to decipher whether the violence is a staged provocation to bring the military back to power or an expression of leftist rage at their electoral impotence.
For strategic, pragmatic and principled reasons, the Left should have denounced the Mubarak-appointed judges the moment they outlawed the elected legislature. The Left should have demanded the ouster of these judges and military leaders and combined their demands with a campaign against Morsi’s ties with the imperial West and Israel and a repudiation of the IMF program. By backing these corrupt judges, progressives gained the short-term support of the Western media and governments while strengthening their strategic enemy.
Argentina: The Right-Left Alliance
President Cristina Fernandez is representative of the center-left regimes, which predominate in Latin America today. Her recent resounding electoral victory[ii] is a product of the popular uprisings (2001-2003), the social reforms and independent foreign policy pursued by her predecessor (and husband) Nestor Kirchner (2003-2007) and several popular reforms implemented under her Presidency.
But like all center-left regimes, President Fernandez (2008-2012) has combined conservative, neo-liberal and populist progressive policies. On the one hand, Fernandez has encouraged foreign mining companies to exploit the Argentina’s great mineral resources, charging very low royalty payments and imposing very few environmental restraints, while, on the other hand, she nationalized the abusive Spanish multinational oil company, Repsol, for non-compliance with its contract.
The government has substantially increased the minimum wage, including for farm workers, while opening up the country to overseas land speculators and investors to buy millions of acres of farmland. The government has allowed highly toxic-chemicals to be sprayed on fields next to rural communities while increasing corporate taxes and controls over agro-export earnings. The government passed legislation to restrict monopoly ownership of the mass media promising to expand media licensing to local communities and diverse social groups, while doing little to limit the power of big agro-export firms. President Fernandez has supported Latin American integration (excluding the US) and welcomed radical President Chavez as a valuable partner in trade and investment and diversified markets. At the same time Argentina has grown increasingly dependent on a narrow range of agro-mineral (‘primary goods’) exports to the detriment of domestic manufacturing. Presidents Fernandez and Kirchner encouraged trade union activity and, until recently, supported hefty increases in wage, pension and medical benefits, drastically reducing poverty levels – but they did so while maintaining the wealth, land, profits and dividends of the capitalist class.
The Argentine President was able to support both the economic elites and the working class as long as commodity prices and international demand remained high. However, with the economic slowdown in Asia and decline in commodity prices and therefore state revenue, the President is being squeezed from both sides. By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the elite attacked the government more ferociously, led by the big and medium-size landowners and exporters. They demanded the government revoke its increase in export taxes and currency controls. The upper-middle and the affluent middle class of Buenos Aires, backed by supporters of the previous military dictatorship, organized mass marches and demonstrations to protest a medley of government policies, including limits on dollar purchases, inflation and inaction amidst rising crime rates.
Around the same time, conservative and radical leftist trade unionists organized a general strike – ostensibly because wage increases had failed to keep up with ‘real’ rates of inflation (double the ‘official rate’ – so they claimed). The major media monopoly, Clarin, organized a virulent systematic propaganda campaign trumpeting the demands of the economic elite, fabricating stories of government corruption and refusing to comply with the new government legislation in hopes of staving off the dismantling of its huge media monopoly.
The US and EU increased pressure on Argentina by excluding it from international capital markets, questioning its credibility, downgrading its ratings and promoting a virulently hostile anti-Fernandez mass media campaign in the financial press.
The destabilization campaign has been orchestrated by the same economic elites who supported the brutal seven-year military dictatorship during which an estimated 30,000 Argentines were murdered by the juntas. Elite opposition is rooted in reactionary social and economic demands, i.e. lower taxes on exports, deregulation of the dollar market, their monopoly of the mass media and a reversal of popular social legislation.
The ‘left opposition’ includes a variety of movements including Marxist grouplets and trade unions who demand salary increases commensurate with ‘real inflation’ as well as environmentalists demanding tighter controls over agro-chemical pollution, GM seeds and destructive mining operations. Many of these demands have legitimacy, however some of the Marxist and leftist groups have been participating in protests and strikes convoked by the right-wing parties and economic elites designed to destabilize and overthrow the government. Few if any have joined with the government to denounce the blatant US-EU credit squeeze and imperial offensive against Fernandez.
This de-facto Right-Left alliance on the streets is led by the most rancid, authoritarian and neo-liberal elites who ultimately will be the prime beneficiary if the Fernandez regime is destabilized and toppled. By joining general strikes organized by the far-Right, the left claims to be ‘furthering the interests of the workers’ and ‘acting independently’ of the economic elite. However, their activities take place at the same time and same location as the hordes of wealthy upper middle class protestors clamoring for the ouster of the democratically elected center-left regime. The left grouplets maintain that they are in favor of building a ‘workers state’ as they march abreast with the rich and militarists. Objectively, their capacity to catalyze a revolution is nil and the real outcome of their ‘opportunism’ will be a victory for the agro-export elite – mass media monopolies – US-EU alliance. The ‘leftist’ workers protest is mere window dressing for the destabilization of a social-liberal democracy and will help return a far-right regime to power!
The majority of the workers, pensioners and trade unionists reject any participation in the bosses’ general strikes – even as they voice their legitimate demands for better pay and the indexing of wage rates to the real inflation rate. However they join with the government in rejecting the international creditor demands and US judicial rulings favoring Wall Street speculators over Argentina’s social interests. Nevertheless, the left-right protest resonates with many rank and file employees, especially when export revenues decline and the Fernandez regime lacks the funds to maintain the social spending of the past decade.
The political challenge for the consequential Left is to defend democracy against this opportunist ‘Left’-Right onslaught while defending workers’ interests in the face of a decaying center-left regime bent on pursuing its contradictory program.
Conclusion: The Dilemmas of Capitalist Democracies
The capitalist democracies of Egypt and Argentina face similar Left-Right alliances, even though they differ sharply in their socio-economic trajectory and social bases of support. Both Argentina and Egypt have emerged from brutal dictatorships in recent years: Argentine democracy is nearly 30 years old while Egyptian democracy is less than a year old. Argentine democracy, like Egypt’s, has been confronting powerful authoritarian institutions leftover from the dictatorial period. These are entrenched especially in three areas: the military and police, the judiciary and among sectors of the capitalist class. They all benefited from the special privileges granted by the dictators.
In Argentina, over the past decade, Presidents Kirchner and Fernandez succeeded in purging the state apparatus of criminals, murderers and torturers among the military, police and judiciary. In Egypt, the Morsi regime, in its short time in office, hesitated at first, but then moved forward replacing some Mubarak military commanders and promising to investigate and prosecute those Mubarak-appointed officials involved in the killing and torture of pro-democracy demonstrators. The Egyptian reactionaries struck back: Mubarak-appointed judges denied the legality of the democratically elected legislature and constituent assembly. In Argentina, powerful agrarian interests and the right-wing mass media conglomerate, which had backed the dictatorships, struck back as the government moved to end the corporate media monopoly and tax concessions to the agro-export elite. The conflict between the dictatorial right and the democratic center-left in Argentina and the conflict between the Mubarak judiciary and the Islamist neo-liberal elected regime is partially obscured by the active involvement of leftists, secular liberals and other ostensibly ‘pro-democracy’ forces on the side of the Right.
Why has ‘the left’ crossed the line, joining forces with the anti-democratic right?
Their opportunism arises primarily from the fact that they did so poorly in the elections and do not see any role for themselves as an electoral opposition. By joining with the right-wing protests, the left and secular liberals mistakenly imagine they can revive their faltering support.
Secondly, the Left senses the economic and social vulnerability of the elected regimes because of the global and local crises, exacerbated by declining export revenues. They hope to attach their political demands to those of the upper and middle class protestors who have been mobilized by the Far Right.
Thirdly, by joining forces with the Right, allied with the US and EU, the leftist protestors hope to gain international (imperial) support, recognition, respectability and legitimacy … temporarily. Of course if the Right succeeds, the Left will be marginalized and discarded as ‘useful idiots’.
The imperial threats to cut off credits, loans and markets to both regimes should logically have led to a united front – a tactical alliance – between the Left and the embattled regime, especially in the case of Argentina. In the case of Egypt, secular liberals and leftists should have joined with the Morsi regime to oust the remnants of the brutal Mubarak regime. They should have supported the elected legislature, even while challenging Morsi’s pacts with the IMF, the US, EU and Israel. Instead, secular liberals appear to agree with the regime in its reactionary socio-economic policies. Worse, by joining with the reactionary judges in totally rejecting the referendum vote on the new constitution, the Left missed an opportunity to mobilize and challenge the regime and educate the public about its specific reactionary clauses.
By opposing the progressive democratic process as well as the regime, the Left has opened the door for the Right to return. By forcing incumbent presidents to ‘make a deal’ or compromise with the elite, the left is further isolating themselves. Both Morsi and Fernandez are vulnerable to leftist pressure and, over time, popular and class-based movements could find themselves in a position to pose a real alternative…. if they clearly and honestly reject the authoritarian and imperialist right. By joining in opportunist alliances to score some small victories today, they foreclose any possible role in the near future of forming progressive democratic leftist governments. By burning government offices and destroying the electoral offices of the Muslim Brotherhood, the self-styled ‘democrats’ are creating the basis for the seizure of state power by the military.
Notes
[i] In the parliamentary elections the two major Islamist parties polled over 27 million votes (18 million for the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi), the liberal-left opposition received approximately 7.5 million votes and the Mubarac-era parties got 2 million. The Islamist parties totaled about two-thirds of the electorate, which translated into the same proportion of elected legislators (358 out of 508). The liberal-left parties received slightly over 26% of the vote and the Mubarak parties got about 8%. The anti-Morsi rioters are a clear and decisive minority and their violent assault on the governing regime is, by any measure, an attempt to impose minority rule, denying and marginalizing the nearly 18 million voters who elected the Morsi Government and Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Congress.
[ii] Cristina Fernandez was first elected in October 2007 with 45.3% of the vote, a 22% lead over her nearest rival. In the most recent elections in October 2011, she was re-elected with 54.1% of the vote, a 37.3% margin over her nearest competitor.
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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 in nonprofessional journals such as the New York Times, the Guardian, the Nation, Christian Science Monitor, Foreign Policy, New Left Review, Partisan Review, Temps Moderne, Le Monde Diplomatique, and his commentary is widely carried on the internet. His most recent books are: The Arab Revolt and the Imperialist Counterattack
(Clarity Press 2012) 2nd edition, The Power of Israel in the United States and Rulers and Ruled in the US Empire: Bankers, Zionists and Militants, (acquired for Japanese, German, Italian, Indonesian, Czech and Arabic editions), Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power, Global Depression and Regional Wars: The United States, Latin America and the Middle East, and War Crimes in Gaza and the Zionist Fifth Column in America. He has a long history of commitment to social justice, working in particular with the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement for 11 years. In 1973-76 he was a member of the Bertrand Russell Tribunal on Repression in Latin America. He writes a monthly column for the Mexican newspaper, Le Jornada, and previously, for the Spanish daily, El Mundo. He received his B.A. from Boston University and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley.
December 10, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Economics | 2011 Egyptian revolution, Egypt, Islamism, Morsi, Muslim Brotherhood |
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For some time, Swedish Palestinian female TV presenter Gina Dirawi has been chased by Sweden’s Zionist protagonists within the media. Dirawi has been outspoken about Israeli crimes and Palestinian rights. But recently when she referred to Lasse wilhelmson’s book ‘Is The World Upside down?’, all hell broke loose. Wilhelmson is critical of the Jewish state, Zionism and Jewish power. Wilhelmson was one of the first thinkers who pointed at clear ideological and spiritual affiliation between Zionism and the Left, a theme I myself developed in my work. The Swedish media would prefer to keep Wilhelmson in the fringe. The Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet now seems to want him in jail. What we see here is an outrageous and unacceptable assault on freedom of expression. The following are two of Lasse’s answers to his detractors.
Lasse Wilhelmson’s Reply to Åsa Linderborg – Cultural Editor of the tabloid newspaper Aftonbladet
Dear Åsa
In your capacity as Chief Cultural Editor for Aftonbladet, in your article Let’s take a look at this shit (28th November 2012), and in front of the entire Swedish nation you have ‘named and shamed’ me (including a photo) as an evil pershon who deserves condemnation and also probably to be locked up. And why? Simply for holding some opinions. (1)
Reading through the article, which incidentally does not include one single quote from my book Is the World Upside Down?, I ask myself, why would you do that? After all, you’re an educated person, an intellectual, a significant representative of the Swedish cultural elite. You have written a prizewinning book about your childhood, you’re an influential voice of the Swedish left and you have presented yourself as a “free speech fundamentalist”.
You write: “Wilhelmson hates Jews and denies the Holocaust – he always puts inverted commas round it, and he thinks Israel as a nation should be wiped off the map”. I have already accounted for my view on “Holocaust deniers” in my reply to Expo, so here I will do it in the form of some questions for you:
1. Do you consider that what happened to the Jews during the Second World War as a historic event that can be legitimately researched, discussed and revised as we do with other historic events?
If the answer is no then my next question is: Why?
If the answer is yes, the question is: In that case, why is it that, in so many western countries, so many who have done so, have been sentenced to prison?
2. Do you know of any other historic events in our time where people have been imprisoned for having an opinion that differs from the norm?
And lastly to you as a “free speech fundamentalist”:
3. Do you think opinions should be punishable?
Accusations of hating a whole population carries with them, I think, a considerable burden of proof. You have produced none. Asa, I do not hate people, only deeds and ideas, and above all, hypocrisy. But perhaps it is you who hates people who do not share your views – for example, me.
You say that I believe that Israel should be obliterated, though I have never expressed myself in that way. I could say that you are lying, but I prefer to think you are simply deluded..
In my lifetime, I have appeared many times in the media and I have always been given the chance to defend myself when attacked – except that is, when the questions concern Zionism and its short-term goal of a Jewish state in Palestine. Why is this? Could it be that what I have to say is dangerous – perhaps just a little too close to the truth?
Why do you behave in the manner of witch hunts and book burnings when I am simply trying to understand how the world works and which forces lie behind war and misery? My book includes much about this, complete with notes and references.
Over time, I have indeed come to embrace views other than your comfy “leftist” ones. Nowadays, I think ideologies and religions have both light and dark sides – sometimes they are used to liberate people, sometimes to persecute. But, above all, I believe that in order to set ourselves and others free, our thinking must be liberated from the prohibition of forbidden thoughts and from limited thought systems.
In my book you have probably read the introductory ‘chicken’ article, which shows that, even at a basic level, the world can be not exactly as we think it is. And the epilogue too which is an attempt to indicate a direction for our lives which incorporates love and solidarity, without resorting to violence. (2)
You’ve probably also read about my personal background and how my thinking has changed and why. You will know that, in my very full life, I have achieved quite a lot as an activist in the left movement, for the people of Vietnam, as a trade unionist, as a member of one of the contemporary Communist parties and also in many other non-profit organisations. Why, it could be that I am even more versed in Marxism and its classical texts than even you are.
In my home municipality of Täby, I have taken part in local politics for 24 years, working on very real issues there and in the surrounding region. I was a member of the district council and, at one point, I was on the board. I am currently the chairperson of a road committee in the countryside and have just written its Jubilee brochure, with many stories about how an old Swedish farming community has changed over a century.
I have always been a public person and have never hidden behind anonymity. Many know me, or have heard of me, in various contexts. I have five children and many grandchildren and I am married. Have you thought about how your, and the rest of the media’s attempts to make me an object of hate will affect them all? Perhaps that might give you pause for thought?
You know Asa, I think the real reason for your hatred (?) of me lies in the fact that I have pointed out the connection between Zionism and Marxism, between your left and the Jewish Zionist ‘left’, and, of course, the glaring similarity between rightwing-Zionism and Nazism. Zionism is, in fact, both left- and right-wing, its goal is a Jewish state in Palestine. (3)
This is why the Sweden Democrats, the most Israel-friendly party in our parliament, have the same fundamental attitude as most of the “left” that claim to support the Palestinians: that the Jewish state is permanent and that the exiled Palestinians can never, as UN resolutions say they must, return home in any way other than symbolically. They must content themselves with a pseudo-state of 10-20 percent of the original Palestine (the two-state solution) – a situation which can lead to neither justice nor peace between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, nor in the whole of the Middle East and beyond.
Because Zionism (or rather now, post-Zionism), has the whole world as its goal. It is the most significant expression of Anglo-American imperialism and its criminal wars and, to achieve its new world order, its power elite controls the making of ideologies (media) and central banking (the dollar).
Åsa, you don’t have to freak out just because someone suggests that your lifelong right/left map does not actually reflect reality. Such behavior gives the impression that the left that you so personify, is really completely and utterly anti-intellectual.
PS. Do you remember that we once met? It was at a meeting about ten years ago when the social democrats manoeuvred you and other communists off the board of Ordfront (publisher & culture magazine). I gave you a copy of Folket i Bild (leftwing magazine) in which I had published a long article on Zionism. The article included the revelation that Karl Marx had, the somewhat older, Moses Hess as his personal socialist mentor – my “communist rabbi” Marx was wont to call him. Hess wrote three fundamental articles that leave clear tracks in The Communist Manifesto and, soon after, Hess wrote the book “From Rome to Jerusalem”, Zionism’s magnus opus. According to the official founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, this book says everything you need to know about Zionism. I’ve often wondered if you ever read that article. (4)
Lasse Wilhelmson
1 December 2012
1. Let’s take a look at this shit
http://www.aftonbladet.se/kultur/article15845333.ab
2. Epilogue (Quo vadis)
http://lassewilhelmson.wordpress.com/2010/01/01/quo-vadis-2/
3. What is Zionism?
http://lassewilhelmson.wordpress.com/what-is-zionism/
4. Zionism, more than traditional- colonialism and apartheid
http://lassewilhelmson.wordpress.com/2004/01/01/zionism-more-than-traditional-colonialism-and-apartheid/
~~~
Expo’s article “TV-profile recommends an anti-Semitic book”
The above-mentioned article (1), published on November 23rd, 2012, and which has been widely distributed throughout the media, is an assault on Gina Dirawi, a young TV presenter of Palestinian origin.
It is no secret that Expo (Swedish Searchlight) dislikes Gina Dirawi, and any other Palestinians, who occasionally express dismay that their homeland has been stolen and many of its citizens exiled. Expo never criticizes the racist nature of the Jewish state and its genocidal policies (see UN Convention) vis a vis the Palestinians, but rather launches witch-hunts against those that do.
The book referred to as ‘anti-Semitic’ is mine. It is “Is the World Upside Down?” (2009), a selection of articles I wrote and interviews I gave from 2003 to 2009. Several articles are co-written with others. The book is about Palestine, the neocolonial wars and Zionism (2), and also contains a re-evaluation of certain “truths” about twentieth century history as imposed by the victors of both the Russian Revolution and the two World Wars. The book can also be understood as a personal journey – an attempt to assume a humanitarian approach, independent of ideologies and religions.
The campaign against Gina Dirawi is a clear case of guilt by association – a common, but extremely distasteful and unethical, tactic. This campaign uses distorted interpretations and a false taboo-image of the book and its author.
A few things to ponder ….
- Are we to no longer read books that do not comply with our preconceived ideas? Are we to no longer read books to improve our knowledge and even, perhaps, to understand our lives and the world we live ii? Are we no longer to read books other than for pure entertainment?
- Do we need moral gate-keepers to tell us which books we may read? Rather than being openly and freely discussed, are readers and writers to be simply branded? Have we really gone back to book burning? Is it only the elderly among us that remember Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible (1953).
- Why is it that the media always and routinely publishes Expo’s articles but seldom checks for accuracy, out-of-context facts and quotes, interpretations, value judgments and sources?
I can see no humanitarian and righteous solution to the situation in Israel/Palestine except that all exiled Palestinians be permitted to return home and regain their possessions. This is in full accordance with UN resolution 194. Jewish settlers who do not wish to live in equality and harmony with other Palestinians between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, should return to the countries from which they came. This may seem utopian, but all else leads only to catastrophe – even for the Jews themselves in Israel/Palestine and the surrounding world.
I always try to be careful not to blame whole groups when certain members of those groups behave badly or illegally and, as far as I know, I have never done so. Yet it is often precisely this of which I am accused – but only when it comes to Jews. I still await some substantial, contextual proof of my transgressions so I can correct or explain myself.
I do not hate people, but I do hate double standards – especially hypocrisy – a hypocrisy most blatant when it is about anything to do with Israel/Palestine, Jews and Zionism. Hypocrisy disgusts me as totally incompatible with ethics and morals. It is this which underpins the harsh words I often use in my political articles.
For the most part, I criticize the Jewish “Mafia” who are among the richest and most influential people in the western world, and also all those who serve their cause. I also criticize Jewish lobbies and Jewish settlers. If I speak of ‘Jews’ I do so in the same way I might speak of ‘Palestinians’, ‘Swedes’ or any other group. Obviously, ideologies, religions, mentalities and cultures can be criticized in more general terms.
In my opinion, it is no myth but a fact that there is a Jewish Mafia (just as there are Chinese and Italian Mafias) which has a disproportionate influence on the world economy, ideology (media and Hollywood etc… ) in the western world and on American foreign policy. And this situation is repeated in most European countries. This influence is used, for the most part, quite openly and by many very famous people.
It is also true that Jews often put loyalty to the Jewish state before loyalty to the country in which they live.
It must be legitimate to discuss all these things openly and freely without witch hunting and book-burnings.
Most of what I write, I base on articles found in Israeli newspapers and documents in Jewish libraries, together with books from Jewish professors of history and political scientists. So far, most of the information can still be found on the internet.
I believe that Zionists misuse Judaism, similar to the way in which Crusaders misused Christianity, let alone the Wahhabites’ misuse of Islam. I have warned that the international crimes of the Jewish state and the Jewish Mafia could well have a boomerang effect on all Jews if they are not able to distance themselves from it. After all, the Jewish state is proclaimed in the name of all Jews, and all Israel’s wars are waged by weapons bearing Jewish religious symbols.
In the Expo article I am quoted: “There has been animosity against Jews all through history. But it is often induced by the Jews themselves through their behaviour.” What is wrong with that? The same applies to all groups especially any group of people who see themselves as better than other people and particularly, “God’s chosen people.” But my strongest reaction is reserved for the way Jews have taken upon themselves a monopoly of suffering that overrides the suffering of others and is used to legitimize Israel’s policies and treatment of the Palestinians.
Furthermore, rather than history, always subject to discussion and revision, the Holocaust with its capital H, has, I believe, been transformed into a religious taboo dogma, Most outrageous is when it is used for political reasons to start new wars and legitimize genocide against the Palestinians who, we must always remember, had nothing whatsoever to do with any persecution of Jews.
As far as I know, there are no Holocaust deniers who deny that brutal crimes and atrocities were committed against the Jews, as well as other groups, during the Second World War. All the so-called Holocaust deniers, including those who have been convicted and imprisoned, have merely observed and reconsidered various parts of the official dogma. (3)
The term “anti-Semitism” (4) is no longer viable because of its political use to discredit various critics of Israel, or to vilify people. As Shulamit Aloni, former Israeli MP, said in an interview to the famous American radio/TV reporter Amy Goodman: “It’s a trick, we always use it”. (5)
As far as the term “conspiracy theorist” goes, that too is misused for political reasons. There have, and always will be, conspiracies in the corridors of power, and the powerful and their geeks will always call those who try to understand their conspiracies, conspiracy theorists – meaning some kind of sick fantasists. This is Orwellian doublespeak. There are, indeed, so-called crackpots all over the place – many planted by those in power to create confusion.
And finally: I talk and discuss with everyone. My articles are published anywhere. I am always a public person and I wish to debate facts – something I have rarely been offered to do in the ten years I have been writing about these issues. Free speech, what free speech?
If what I have written here and elsewhere means that I am a “conspiracy theorist”, “anti-Semite” and “Holocaust denier”, then so be it. I hope and expect that soon there will be many more of us.
Lasse Wilhelmson
30 november 2012
1. Expo´s article
http://expo.se/2012/tv-profil-tipsar-om-antisemitisk-bok_5482.html
2. What is Zionism?
http://lassewilhelmson.wordpress.com/what-is-zionism/
3. Why is the Truth Dangerous?
http://lassewilhelmson.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/why-is-the-truth-so-dangerous/
4. Anti-Semitism as a political weapon
http://lassewilhelmson.wordpress.com/2005/12/01/anti-semitism-as-a-political-weapon/
5. It’s a trick. we always use it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW3a1bw5XlE&feature=player_embedded
December 10, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Gilad Atzmon, Israel, Jewish State, Media of Sweden, Wilhelmson, Zionism |
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By Yusuf Fernandez | Al-Manar | December 10, 2012
The Syrian and foreign rebels, who are conducting operations in several provinces of Syria, have once again tried to expand their field of action to the capital, Damascus, but they have failed to do so despite support from Western and Arab media, which always refers to any one-time or limited rebel success as though it was final and definitive. This media and the insurgent propaganda try to persuade the world, and especially the Qatari and Saudi sponsors of the armed groups, that the rebellion is booming.
Most Western media uncritically reproduces statements made by the pro-rebellion London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) as though they were proven facts. In recent days, the SOHR has suggested that Damascus is (once again) about to fall.
The Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram even claimed that “the inhabitants of the Syrian capital Damascus… are subjected to brutal attacks from military positions on the outskirts and Mount Qasiun overlooking the city”. Claims like this one sought to make the public believe that the rebels were already controlling a part of the city. The newspaper also repeated the rebels´ propaganda as a parrot: “The revolutionaries say that their advance on Damascus will trigger a mutiny by the army against its commanders. They hope that thousands will also defect from the regular army and argue that the establishment of a no-fly zone in the country would automatically bring this about.”
Friday November 16th was dubbed by the armed bands the “Friday of the Advance on Damascus”, indicating a “decisive battle” with the regime. They prepared their offensive and several groups arrived in the Damascus province from several places in Syria, such as Deraa and Deir Ezzor. It is, therefore, clear that the rebels attempted in November their most important effort against the capital since their failure of the summer. But this offensive, like the previous one, appears to have been thwarted.
Despite the Free Syrian Army (FSA)´s operations in some towns of Damascus province, this group has at no time been able to enter the city. There have been clashes in the town of Daraya (South-West of the capital), the agricultural region of the Ghouta and the International Airport area (East). For the rebels, it was especially important to capture Daraya because of its strategic position: it oversees the important military airport of Mazzé.
The army´s counter-offensive
On November 29th, the Syrian army launched a vast operation of cleaning these areas within a radius of 5 to 12 miles around the capital. They had already been cleaned last August, but the destruction of armed bands in a densely-inhabited zone is not an easy task.
The newspaper al-Watan announced on December 2nd an army offensive against the places where terrorists had gathered together. “The Syrian army has opened since Thursday morning the gates of hell to all those who were thinking about approaching Damascus or launching an attack against the capital”, wrote the newspaper. It added that the government forces had inflicted heavy casualties on the rebels in several towns and villages.
After some days of offensive, the village of Daraya is now in the hands of the army. The town of Harasta, emptied of its inhabitants since it was invaded by the FSA, is also under the control of government forces while pockets of rebels remain in the nearby village of Duma.
In Ghouta, in the East, where the battle was at its peak this week around the International Airport, informed sources ensure that the airport and its surroundings have been secured, but gunfire can still be heard in distant regions. In the Sayyeda Zainab area, clashes persist between the pro-government militias protecting the district and armed groups holed up in the zone.
According to the Lebanese channel al-Mayadeen, which quoted a Syrian security official, the most violent combat took place on December 3rd. The site Syria Truth advanced the figure of 500 militiamen killed in the first four days of the army´s counter-offensive, including 40 in Deir al-Assafir, 30 in Nina al-Awamid, 60 in Shaba, 100 near the airport and 200 in the sector of Daraya. Al-Watan spoke of “hundreds of terrorists” killed in these days. On the other hand, the Syrian Air Force, indifferent to the threat of the fifty or so American surface-to-air missiles that the rebels hold, continues its attacks on the rebel positions every day.
On the other hand, the limited strength of the rebels in the Damascus province, where they are only a few thousands, make them structurally unable to seriously threaten a city of more than two million inhabitants, where the government is, for obvious reasons, particularly powerful. Rebel advances are always precarious and the armed bands cannot resist the counter-attacks of the army and the militias fighting alongside with it. In this context, the new rebel offensive on Damascus is already becoming another resounding failure.
December 10, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Damascus, Daraya, Deir Ezzor, Free Syrian Army, Syria, Syrian Army |
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God bless Philip Weiss, the progressive Jewish blogger brave enough to admit in public those things other Jewish ethnic activists prefer to shove under the carpet. A year ago, Weiss was brave enough to confess to me that it is ‘Jewish self interests’ that stands at the core of his pro Palestinian activism. Also, a few weeks ago, the same Weiss was honest enough to announce that his Jewish ‘progressive’ internet journal, Mondowiess, changed its comment policy and “will no longer serve as a forum to pillory Jewish culture and religion as the driving factors in Israeli and US policy.”
But this week, the very same Weiss published a new polemic on his website. He now thinks that “it’s time for the media to talk about Zionism.” So, now Weiss is happy to join with the rest of us in talking about Zionism – so long as we avoid discussing ‘Jewishness’. Well, I’m afraid that Philip Weiss may have missed the train since, by now, many of us have already grasped that the time is ripe to talk about Jewishness and the role of ‘Jewish culture as the driving factor in Israeli and US policy.’
Weiss’ logic is no doubt fascinating. This Jewish ethnic activist does provide us with an insight into the level of deceit that is, unfortunately, inherent to Jewish left politics.
Weiss thinks Jews should ask themselves whether they really are ‘unsafe’ in America. Well, Weiss must know plenty about ‘safety’ since it was he himself who felt that it may be ‘risky’ to discuss Jewish culture and religion on his own Mondoweiss.
“Zionism,” he continues, “draws on a person’s worldview and has a religious character, it supplies meaning to his or her life.” Well again, Weiss should know because, like all Zionists, both overt and covert, he operates within a Jews-only political cell namely “Jews Voice for Peace’ (JVP). For some reason, just like his less enlightened brethren, this very ‘progressive’ activist prefers to surround himself with members of his own tribe.
Weiss well knows why the media avoids discussing Zionism, “it would involve a lot of squeamish self-interrogation on the part of Jews,” and Weiss knows what this means. That’s why he, and his Jewish partner Adam Horowitz, banned Jeff Blankfort from commenting on their site – Blankfort was critically discussing Jewish related topics. Weiss couldn’t allow it.
Weiss is brave enough to admit that “the acknowledgment of Jewish prominence in the Establishment, and of the power of Zionism, would make a lot of Jews uncomfortable”, but he isn’t bold enough to admit that the problem is far worse, since Jewish anti-Zionists like himself and JVP are relentlessly seeking a similar hegemony within the Palestinian solidarity discourse and openly campaign against prominent activists who challenge Jewish power. Is it possible that what we are dealing with here is a tribally-driven, power seeking tendency that is inherent to Jewish politics? The answer is a categorical yes, and I provide all the relevant information on this in my latest book The Wandering Who.
Weiss regards himself as an anti-Zionist while, as far as his language is concerned, he actually manifests every possible Zionist symptom. “Silence” on issues to do with Zionist power is “bad for Jews,” says Weiss. Like any Hasbara parrot he repeats the old mantra of ‘good’ vs. ‘bad’ for the Jews. But then isn’t this just what you would expect from a Zionist?
It doesn’t take Weiss too long to drop his political bomb: the silence over Zionist power “allows people who are justifiably angry over our foreign policy to believe that all Jews support Israel.” Here, Weiss is absolutely correct. It is about time to deliver the message to the American people and the entire world – Not all Jews support Israel! In fact, at least two dozen American Jews including Weiss oppose Zionism because, as Weiss confesses, because “it is really bad for the Jews.”
If you think you’ve had enough of Weiss’ Judeo-centrism read this: “Zionism came out of the real condition of Jews in Europe in the late 19th and 20th centuries. I can well imagine being a Zionist at other periods of Jewish history. I would have been a Zionist if I had been in Kafka’s circle in Prague in the 19-teens with the rise of anti-Semitism. I would have been a Zionist if I had been born into the family of my mother’s best friend in Berlin in the 1930s.”
In this embarrassing passage, Weiss, the so-called ‘anti’ Zionist, actually admits that considerations of Jewish safety would justify the colonization of Palestine. This non-ethical vision is also apparent in JVP’s latest ‘educational’ video. It is clearly consistent with the Zionist take on the primacy of Jewish suffering. Which is exactly what you would expect from a Jew who operates politically within Jewish racially-segregated cells. There is only one possible conclusion – Jewish anti Zionism is a myth. Jewish opposition to Zionism is just another form of Zionism-lite that, just like it’s right-wing counterpart, locates Jewish self-interest firmly at its core.
Weiss is a pretty clumsy spin-doctor. He argues that the current militant and totalitarian aspects of Israeli society flow from a ‘Zionist belief system’. Here, Weiss misleads his readers and I think he does this consciously. Israel defines itself as the Jewish State and as the true embodiment of Jewish culture. Its barbarism is the direct outcome of its interpretation of Jewish texts and spirit. If anything, Zionism was born to ‘civilize’ the Diaspora Jew who, certain 19th century emancipated secular Jews found so repellent. So it is not Zionism that makes Israel barbarous, it is the way Israelis interpret their cultural, spiritual and textual heritage. Of course, Weiss is welcome to suggest that there is another possible interpretation to Jewish heritage, but he should be precise and point to those Jewish texts that preach universal ethics and world peace.
Weiss reckons that once we should be brave enough to deal with Zionism, “liberal Zionists will be pressed to decide what they believe in more, liberalism or Zionism.” But still I’m puzzled. If Weiss is so open and tolerant, surely he would allow discussion on his own website concerning the Jewish character of the Jewish State. He would invite a discussion concerning the Jewishness of the Jewish Lobby. I believe that Philip Weiss is operating unwillingly and unwittingly as a Zionist fig leaf. He invests all his intellectual energy diverting attention from the root cause of the problem – namely Jewish culture and Jewish identity politics. And why? Probably because of his own unease with is own Anti Zionist Zionist behaviour.
December 9, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Israel, Jews, Judaism, Philip Weiss, United States, Zionism |
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THE last few days have seen an intensification of statements and false reports from the U.S. government related to the case of U.S. citizen Alan Gross, particularly related to the alleged deterioration of his health.
Once again, the U.S. government is lying to the public, by affirming that Mr. Gross is suffering from cancer and is not receiving adequate medical attention.
These lies have not stopped, not even after his family and U.S. authorities were given the results of the biopsy of a lesion on Mr. Gross’ back, which leave no doubt that he does not have cancer.
From the very first day, a team of Cuban doctors of international repute have systematically attended to Mr. Gross. This team has the results of a biopsy and other examinations which demonstrate that Mr. Gross is not suffering from cancer or any other illness representing a threat to his life. The U.S. has no evidence to demonstrate the contrary. If these distortions persist, we shall be obliged to divulge further evidence.
The U.S. government is also lying about Mr. Gross’ prison conditions, his schedule of telephone calls and visits.
The U.S. government is continuing to lie as to the causes which led to Mr. Gross’ detention, with the sole purpose of evading his direct responsibility for his situation and that of his family.
The U.S. government has never addressed the case of Alan Gross seriously and has only reiterated the unsustainable position that it has nothing to negotiate with Cuba in order to find a solution. At the same time, it insists on demanding from Cuba a unilateral decision which does not consider our humanitarian concerns related to the case of the Five. This is not realistic. I reiterate today Cuba’s disposition to immediately establish a dialogue on the issue of Gross.
On the basis of these fabrications and curiously coinciding with the anniversary of Mr. Gross’ detention, the U.S. government has pressured the UN Human Rights Council Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to force a decision declaring Mr. Gross’ detention arbitrary. Today, we denounce these acts of pressure, which led to a violation of the customary procedures and timing of the Group’s work.
Yesterday, December 4, the government of Cuba received the opinion of this group describing Alan Gross’ detention as arbitrary.
Today, we are circulating via the MINREX website Cuba’s response to the United Nations Group, which demonstrates that the detention of Mr. Gross cannot in any way be described as arbitrary.
Alan Gross was detained, tried and sentenced with all guarantees and rights of due legal process and in fulfillment of principles related to judicial independence. Mr. Gross violated Cuban laws by committing acts that constitute serious crimes, acts which are severely punished in most countries, including the U.S.
The United States does not permit any other government to ignore its regulations and clandestinely send individuals to its territory, with government funding from this other government, to establish illegal and covert communications systems, without undertaking any kind of procedure or registration, far less so when the objective is to destabilize the existing order.
Mr. Gross has received decorous and humane treatment since he was arrested.
The United Working Group is the same body which, in May 2005, declared arbitrary the detention of the five Cuban anti-terrorists, taking into consideration that they were held in solitary confinement for 17 months, did not have due access to lawyers and the evidence related to the case, as well as the existing climate of predisposition and prejudice which contributed to the Five being presented as guilty from the outset, given the absence of objectivity and impartiality.
The government of Cuba once again invites the U.S. government to serious talks on these issues in order to achieve a humanitarian solution acceptable to both sides.
International Press Center
Havana, December 5, 2012.
December 8, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception | Alan Gross, Cuba, United States, US government |
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