The War on Afghan Civilians
Expecting Gen. McChrystal to Protect Afghan Civilians is Like Hiring Ted Bundy to Combat Sexual Harassment in the Workplace
By DAVE LINDORFF | March 17, 2010
Three months after it initially lied about the murder by US forces of eight high school students and a 12-year-old shepherd boy in Afghanistan, and a month after it lied about the slaughter by US forces of an Afghan police commander, a government prosecutor, two of their pregnant wives and a teenage daughter, the US military has been forced to admit (thanks in no small part to the excellent investigative reporting of Jerome Starkey of the London Times), that these and other atrocities were the work of American Special Forces, working in conjunction with “specially trained” (by the US) units of the Afghan Army.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of the US war effort in Afghanistan, says he is taking over “direct charge” of Special Forces operations because of “concern” that they were not following his orders to make limiting civilian casualties a “paramount” objective. McChrystal is quoted as saying the US military “carries the burden of the guilt” for the “mistakes” made by those Special Forces.
This has to be a sick joke. These incidents were not mistakes; they were planned actions. It’s all the sicker because we know that the US is busy training the Afghan Army to take over this kind of dirty work. And besides, even if McChrystal does assume direct command over Special Forces, that would leave unaccounted for the tens of thousands of private mercenary units hired by the US who are working completely in the shadows for the CIA or other organizations. (One such group hired buy the Defense Department, which posed as an intelligence-gathering operation, was recently exposed as actually being a privately run death squad.)
McChrystal, recall, was in charge of a huge and brutal death squad operation in Iraq before he was given his new assignment in Afghanistan, and at the time he was put in charge of the Afghanistan War, it was reported that he was planning to put in place a similar operation in Afghanistan, designed to take out the Taliban leadership in the country.
What we have been seeing in Afghanistan–and this goes way back to before the appointment of McChrystal, or even the election of President Barack Obama, and his subsequent escalation of the war–has been a vicious campaign of terror against the Afghan people.
It should be no surprise that this is so. It is the way the US has always done counterinsurgency. In a war in which the insurgents (or patriots, if you will–the people fighting against foreign occupiers, or in out case, the US) are a part of the people, and American forces are the invaders, the goal is to drive a wedge between those fighters and the rest of the population.
In Pentagon propaganda, this is referred to as “winning the hearts and minds” of the people, but in reality, the US military doesn’t give a damn about hearts and minds. It simply wants the people to become unwilling to hide or support the enemy fighters it is facing. If it can accomplish that by making people afraid, then that is what it will do, and making people afraid is much easier than “winning hearts and minds.”
How do you make people afraid of supporting or hiding and protecting enemy fighters like the Taliban? You terrorize them. You bomb their homes. You conduct night raids on their homes. You bomb their weddings and their excursions to neighboring towns or markets. You shoot them when they get too close to your vehicles.
Statistics show that the US has, in both Iraq and now Afghanistan, routinely killed more civilians than actual enemy fighters. That tells us all we need to know about what is really going on. America is fighting a war of terror against the people of Afghanistan.
No amount of feigned public hand-wringing by the blood-stained Gen. McChrystal, or of assertions that he is going to assume direct control (from whom? are we to assume that they were operating without direction before?) of the Special Operations troops in the country, will alter that fact. Civilians–including especially women and children–in Afghanistan will continue to die in prodigious numbers because that is how the US fights its wars these days.
The people of Afghanistan know this. That’s why the majority of them want the US out of their country.
It’s Americans who don’t know the truth, and it’s Americans who are really the target of statements from the Pentagon and from Gen. McChrystal claiming that the US is taking steps, nine years into this war, to “reduce civilian casualties” in Afghanistan. It doesn’t help that news organizations like the New York Times propagate that propaganda, as the paper did today in a lead headline that said: “US is Reining in Special Forces in Afghanistan. General Takes Control. McChrystal has Raised Civilian Casualties as a Concern.” It simply wouldn’t do to tell Americans that their country is conducting a war of terror. We are supposed to be the good guys who are bringing peace and democracy to a benighted land.
So let’s just face the facts squarely. The US is not the good guy in Afghanistan. It is an agent of death and destruction. Just check out the town of Marjah, largely destroyed over the last few months in order to “save” it from a handful of Taliban fighters. Over 30 civilians died in that American show of force, and the message of those deaths was clear: allow the Taliban to operate in your town, and we’ll kill you–not just your men, but your wives and your children, too.
NPR interviews two Israel lobbyists for story on settlement squabble
By Philip Weiss | March 16, 2010
The New Jersey Department of State has 19 agencies and divisions, only one of which is devoted to relations with a specific foreign country. Put on your thinking cap, now!
The agency is called, the New Jersey-Israel Commission, whose mission “is to foster economic, scientific, educational and cultural ties with the State of Israel, one of the Garden State’s most important trading partners.” The Commission chair is Daniel Kurtzer, a former ambassador to Israel, now a prof at Princeton.
When NPR’s Michele Kelemen did a story yesterday on the contretemps between the US and Israel, she interviewed Kurtzer as an expert, and also David Makovsky, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Kurtzer said, “Israel did a really in-your-face move with the vice president in town and, I think, it needs to find a way to offset that by responding to what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked for..” Makovsky offered neocon cant: “We do recognize that terrorists exploit this issue, but even if we had progress on this issue, does anyone really believe that al-Qaida would disappear or sectarian differences in Iraq would disappear or Iran would not seek a nuclear weapon?”
I admit that Kurtzer has a broad resume and tends to be reasonable–he also told Keleman that the Israelis are hurting our interests in the region–but back to the lead, he is chairman of an agency that promotes trade with Israel. Should NPR have disclosed this fact? Especially at a time when Gen’l Petraeus is saying that the Arab world regards the US as incapable of being tough with Israel?
Also, just to get on my sociological hobbyhorse, Is it really fair that NPR is interviewing two American Jews on this subject? Are there any other Americans who have expert opinions? What about Steve Walt, who knows this issue backward and forward? Or Helena Cobban, who is as sharp as they come? Or Ali Abunimah, who has followed the peace process forever and is funny? They all have less personal identification with Israel than Kurtzer and Makovsky. Can Americans learn their views?
Iran dismisses report on nuclear arms quote
Press TV – March 15, 2010
Iran has dismissed a recent report by an American paper which claimed Tehran was seeking nuclear weapons in the late 1980s.
Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast described the report as a “propaganda ploy that shows Washington’s ultimate frustration.”
In a Sunday article titled ‘Iran’s attempted deal with Pakistan,’ The Washington Post, quoted Abdul Qadir Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, as claiming that Tehran had attempted to purchase nuclear weapons and know-how from Islamabad.
The Post bases its report on “never officially disclosed” material written by Khan while under house arrest in 2004, but does not provide a source for its story.
“The US is using such allegations to deprive the Iranian nation of its nuclear rights, which have been internationally recognized,” Mehmanparast said Monday, adding that Washington was following an “Iranophobia project” to justify its military presence in the Middle East.
The Washington Post report comes while Abdul Qadir Khan has repeatedly dismissed such allegations.
Abdul Basit, Pakistani Foreign Office spokesman, also rejected the report on Monday and said, “It is yet another repackaging of fiction which surfaces occasionally for purposes that are self-evident.”
9/11, ABC, the Washington Post, and Too Many Holes to Plug
By Bill Willers | March 13, 2010
“Some people would think you’re part of the lunatic fringe.” – Chris Bury, ABC News, March 6, 2010, interviewing the producers of Loose Change.
Watch Video
“The only thing novel about Mr. Fujita is that a man so susceptible to the imaginings of the lunatic fringe happens to occupy a notable position in the governing apparatus of a nation that boasts the world’s second-largest economy.” – Washington Post editorial, March 8, 2010
The daily right-wing “talking points” distributed to the Limbaughs, Hannitys et al of the conservative media are, by now, so well understood that they’ve become material for the political humor of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. One has come to expect such wording from the likes of the Fox Channel. When one hears an unlikely phrase like “going rogue” coming out of half a dozen rightist mouths within a the space of a few hours, it’s no longer surprising. Just another “fair and balanced” day.
The fact that such slanderous language as “lunatic fringe” (Bury repeated it in his ABC report with another interviewee) is now coming from such major “mainstream” sources when referencing the 9/11 Truth Movement is more worrisome, because it indicates a rising level of concern within politically powerful elements for an issue based on such a collective of lies that it is simply not going away. Regarding the journalistic objectivity demonstrated in ABC’s edited Nightline report, you can judge for yourself:
click here
A few observations about ABC and the Post:
The convention covered by Mr. Bury included scientists and engineers from Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth who were available for interview. One could see their banner in the background as Bury interviewed a musician. ABC chose to make an association between the Truth Movement and a deranged gunman while ignoring the scientists just a few yards away who could have discussed with authority the physical impossibility of the “official” story and the importance of thermite residue in dust samples. That fact, all by itself, tells a very unlovely story about the journalistic integrity and the personal ethics of decision makers at ABC.
There is something pathetic about Mr. Bury, because, well, he’s such a classic example. While the authors of the Post’s piece can hide behind the anonymous “editorial”, Bury is right there on camera in the role of corrupt journalist. His line of questioning of the two filmmakers was, of course, indefensible, and somehow it showed in closeups of his face that he knew exactly what he was doing.
The Post’s editorial attacking Japanese politician Yukihisa Fujita is amazing in its invective: “…bizarre, half-baked and intellectually bogus;… a man susceptible to the imaginings of the lunatic fringe…”. How on earth can the editorialists at this late date be unaware of the top level personnel all over the globe who share Fujita’s views and who have been absolutely open about it? “We have no reason to believe that Mr. Fujita’s views are widely shared in Japan.” Really? Better look again, and not just in Japan.
The Post editorial reads like a direct threat to the Japanese government. After asserting that Fujita’s views “seem to reflect a strain of anti-American thought that runs through the DPJ and the government of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama”, the writer(s) end with a warning that the U.S-Japan relationship “will be severely tested if Mr. Hatoyama tolerates elements of his own party as reckless and fact-averse as Mr. Fujita.” Ironic, isn’t it, the reference to “fact averse”.
As people look more closely at the official story, more gaping holes become obvious. It will be interesting to see how what we call the “Mainstream Media” will deal with this global 9/11Truth Movement as it keeps gaining strength.
Politicizing the IAEA against Iran
By Muhammad Sahimi | March 13, 2010
On February 18, 2010 the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) issued its latest report on Iran’s nuclear program. The tone of the latest report, as well as its speculations and unfounded allegations, are in sharp contrast with those in the past issued under the former IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei. The new Director General, Yukiya Amano, has set aside ElBaradei’s cautious approach and measured tone and uses blunt language. But, while the blunt language is not a problem, the fact is that, as the latest report indicates, the IAEA is being transformed from an objective international organization to a politicized one to be used by the United States and its allies to advance their agenda regarding Iran’s uranium enrichment program.
To see the politicized nature of the latest IAEA report on Iran, all one should do is compare it with the last report issued by the Agency right before ElBaradei stepped down in November 2009. The first difference is that, whereas the reports issued by the ElBaradei-led IAEA always tried to stay away from the Resolutions issued by the United Nations Security Council, the new report brings the subject into the report very prominently. Another important difference is that, unlike the ElBaradei-led IAEA, the new report resorts to making unreasonable, and sometimes totally illegal, demands. After reporting in the first 4 pages of the report on the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and the one under construction in Fordow (near Qom), it states in article 25 of the report that,
As previously indicated to the Board [of Governors], in light of Iran’s refusal to permit the Agency access to the Heavy Water Production Plant [near Arak], the Agency has had to rely on satellite imagery to monitor the status of that plant.
But a heavy water production plant is not covered by Iran’s Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA. In fact, heavy water is not even considered as nuclear material covered by any IAEA Safeguards Agreement. So, why should Iran open its plants to the IAEA when it has no such obligation?
Another dispute between Iran and the IAEA is about modified Code 3.1 of the Subsidiary Arrangements General Part of Iran’s Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA, signed in 1974 and ratified in 1976. Code 3.1 of the Arrangements stipulated that Iran must declare to the IAEA the existence of any nuclear facility no later than 180 days before introducing any nuclear materials into the facility. That is why, despite all the rhetoric, the construction of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility without it being declared to the IAEA was perfectly legal.
In 1992, the Board of Governors of the IAEA replaced the original Code 3.1 with the modified Code 3.1, which requires a member state to notify the IAEA, “As soon as the decision to construct or to authorize construction has been taken, whichever is earlier” (emphasis mine). It also developed the Additional Protocol to the Safeguards Agreement that empowers the IAEA with the authority for intrusive inspection of any site in any signatory state.
After the Natanz facility was officially declared to the IAEA in February 2003, Iran agreed on February 26, 2003 to the modified Code 3.1. More precisely, Iran agreed to voluntarily implement the modified Code 3.1 until the Majles [the Iranian parliament] ratifies the modification to the Agreement. But while the Majles refused to ratify the modification to the Safeguards Agreement covering the modified Code 3.1, Iran continued to observe it from February 2003 to March 2007.
But, in February 2007 the Board of Governors of the IAEA sent Iran’s nuclear dossier to the United Nations Security Council. Iran contends that the IAEA had acted illegally, and, therefore, in retaliation, it notified the IAEA on 29 March 2007 that it would no longer voluntarily abide by the modified Code 3.1, and would revert to the original Code 3.1 (that required 180 days notification).
Despite this clear history, the IAEA latest report insists in article 29 that,
In accordance with Article 39 of Iran’s Safeguards Agreement, agreed Subsidiary Arrangements cannot be changed unilaterally; nor is there a mechanism in the Safeguards Agreement for the suspension of a provision agreed to in Subsidiary Arrangements. Therefore, the modified Code 3.1, as agreed to by Iran in 2003, remains in force for Iran.
This statement is correct only if the Majles had ratified the change covering the modified Code 3.1. But, given that it did not, Iran has no obligation toward the modified Code 3.1. No country is obligated to carry out the provisions of any international agreement that it has signed, if the country’s parliament has not ratified the treaty. The United States has signed some international agreements, such as the nuclear test ban treaty, that have not been ratified by the Senate.
In article 31 of the report, the IAEA complains again about the modified Code 3.1: “Both in the case of the Darkhovin facility [a mid-size nuclear reactor that Iran intends to construct] and FFEP [Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant], Iran did not notify the Agency in a timely manner of the decision to construct or to authorize construction of the facilities, as required in the modified Code 3.1….” But, once again, Iran has withdrawn from modified Code 3.1, and has no obligation other than Code 3.1 [that requires only 180 days advanced notification].
In article 40, the report once again makes a political statement against all the relevant international laws:
Previous reports by the Director General have detailed the outstanding issues and the actions required of Iran, including, inter alia, that Iran implement the Additional Protocol…
And again in article 50
The Director General requests Iran to take steps towards the full implementation of its Safeguards Agreement and its other obligations, including the implementation of its Additional Protocol.
These statements are even contrary to what the report says in article 6, where the Agency states that, “Since the last report, the Agency has successfully conducted 4 unannounced inspections at FEP, making a total of 35 such inspections since March 2007.” Such unannounced visits are covered only by the Additional Protocol (AP). So, while Iran is still carrying out this aspect of the AP, the IAEA still complains about it and, at the same time, it considers implementation of the AP an obligation for Iran! What is the truth?
Beginning on December 18, 2003, Iran did begin to carry out the provisions of the AP on a voluntary basis, until the Majles ratifies it. Even the European Union that had negotiated the implementation of the AP by Iran recognized its volunteer nature. Iran continued doing so until October 2005, when it declared to the IAEA that it would no longer abide by the AP. The reason was that the proposal that the European Union had presented to Iran in August 2005, according to which Iran was to receive significant economic concessions and security guarantees, was deemed by Iran to be totally inadequate.
At the same time, angered by the European Union attitude toward Iran, the Majles never ratified the AP. Thus, unlike what the IAEA claim, Iran cannot be required to implement the AP. No sovereign nation has any obligation to sign and implement any international agreement that it does not deem it to be in its national interests.
Articles 42 and 43 of the report have to do with the alleged documents that were supposedly in a laptop that had been purportedly stolen in Iran, taken out of the country, and made available to Western intelligence agencies in Turkey. Most experts have cast doubt on the authenticity of the laptop’s documents. A senior European diplomat was quoted by the New York Times in a Nov. 13, 2005, article as saying, “I can fabricate that data. It looks beautiful, but is open to doubt.” Another European official said, “Yeah, so what? How do you know what you’re shown on a slide is true, given past experience?”
But, the IAEA, led by Olli Heinonen, the IAEA’s deputy Director General of safeguards – a man who has a reputation inconsistent with impartiality and objectivity, continues insisting that Iran explain the document, while also refusing to present Iran with the original document, or check the laptop for its digital chain of custody that would show when the alleged document were up loaded in the laptop.
Then, in article 46 of the report, the IAEA makes the most outrageous statement:
While the Agency continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran, Iran has not provided the necessary cooperation to permit the Agency to confirm that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities.
Thus, what the report seems to be implying is that, there are undeclared nuclear materials in Iran, whereas there has never been a shred of evidence that such materials exist.
Finally, the report prominently mentions the Security Council Resolutions against Iran. As I have explained elsewhere, sending Iran’s nuclear dossier to the Security Council, which was the basis for approving resolutions 1737, 1747, 1803, and 1835 against Iran, was completely illegal and against the IAEA Status. Thus, even the legality of the Security Council resolutions is questionable.
Thus, the IAEA is being totally politicized by the U.S. and its allies to advance their agenda against Iran. This is being done while Iran is by and large abiding by its obligations under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and its Safeguards Agreement, while the U.S. allies – South Korea, Taiwan, and Egypt – have grossly violated their nuclear obligations. Not only has the IAEA not taken any action against these countries, there is hardly any official IAEA report about their illegal nuclear activities.
Truth, History and Integrity
By Gilad Atzmon | March 13, 2010
Back in 2007 the notorious American Jewish right-wing organization, the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) announced that it recognised the events in which an estimated 1.5 million Armenians were massacred as “genocide.” The ADL’s national director, Abraham Foxman, insisted that he made the decision after discussing the matter with ‘historians’. For some reason he failed to mention who the historians were, nor did he refer to their credibility or field of scholarship. However, Foxman also consulted with one holocaust survivor who supported the decision. It was Elie Wiesel, not known for being a leading world expert on the Armenian ordeal.
The idea of a Zionist organization being genuinely concerned, or even slightly moved, by other people’s suffering could truly be a monumental transforming moment in Jewish history. However, this week we learned that the ADL is once again engaged in the dilemma of Armenian suffering. It is not convinced anymore that the Armenians suffered that much. It is now lobbying the American congress not to recognize the killings of Armenians as ‘genocide. This week saw the ADL “speaking out against Congressional acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide, and is, instead, advocating Turkey’s call for a historical commission to study the events.”
How is it that an event that took place a century ago is causing such a furor? One day it is generally classified as ‘genocide’, the next, it is demoted to an ordinary instance of one man killing another. Was it an ‘historical document’ that, out of nowhere, popped out on Abe Foxman’s desk? Are there some new factual revelations that led to such a dramatic historical shift? l don’t think so.
The ADL’s behaviour is a glimpse into the notion of Jewish history and the Jewish understanding of the past. For the nationalist and political Jew, history is a pragmatic tale, it is an elastic account. It is foreign to any scientific or academic method. Jewish history transcends itself beyond factuality, truthfulness or correspondence rules with any given vision of reality. It also repels integrity or ethics. It by far prefers total submission, instead of creative and critical thinking. Jewish history is a phantasmic tale that is there to make the Jews happy and the Goyim behave themselves. It is there to serve the interests of one tribe and that tribe only. In practice, from a Jewish perspective, the decision whether there was an Armenian genocide or not is subject to Jewish interests: is it good for the Jews or is it good for Israel.
Interestingly enough, history is not a particularly ‘Jewish thing’. It is an established fact that not a single Jewish historical text has been written between the 1st century (Josephus Flavius) and early 19th century (Isaak Markus Jost). For almost 2 thousand years Jews were not interested in their own or anyone else’s past, at least not enough to chronicle it. As a matter of convenience, an adequate scrutiny of the past was never a primary concern within the Rabbinical tradition. One of the reasons is probably that there was no need for such a methodical effort. For the Jew who lived during ancient times and the Middle Ages, there was enough in the Bible to answer the most relevant questions to do with day-to-day life, Jewish meaning and fate. As Israeli historian Shlomo Sand puts it, “a secular chronological time was foreign to the ‘Diaspora time’ that was shaped by the anticipation for the coming of the Messiah.”
However, in the mid 19th century, in the light of secularisation, urbanisation, emancipation and due to the decreasing authority of the Rabbinical leaders, an emerging need of an alternative cause rose amongst the awakening European Jews. All of a sudden, the emancipated Jew had to decide who he was and where he came from. He also started to speculate what his role might be within the rapidly opening Western society.
This is where Jewish history in its modern form was invented. This is also where Judaism was transformed from a world religion into a ‘land registry’ with some clearly devastating racially orientated and expansionist implications. As we know, Shlomo Sand’s account of the ‘Jewish Nation’ as a fictional invention is yet to be challenged academically. However, the dismissal of factuality or commitment to truthfulness is actually symptomatic of any form of contemporary Jewish collective ideology and identity politics. The ADL’s treatment of the Armenian topic is just one example. The Zionist’s dismissal of a Palestinian past and heritage is just another example. But in fact any Jewish collective vision of the past is inherently Judeo-centric and oblivious to any academic or scientific procedure.
When I was Young
When I was young and naïve I regarded history as a serious academic matter. As I understood it, history had something to do with truth seeking, documents, chronology and facts. I was convinced that history aimed to convey a sensible account of the past based on methodical research. I also believed that it was premised on the assumption that understanding the past may throw some light over our present and even help us to shape a prospect of a better future. I grew up in the Jewish state and it took me quite a while to understand that the Jewish historical narrative is very different. In the Jewish intellectual ghetto, one decides what the future ought to be, then one constructs ‘a past’ accordingly. Interestingly enough, this exact method is also prevalent amongst Marxists. They shape the past so it fits nicely into their vision of the future. As the old Russian joke says, “when the facts do not conform with the Marxist ideology, the Communist social scientists amend the facts (rather than revise the theory)”.
When I was young, I didn’t think that history was a matter of political decisions or agreements between a rabid Zionist lobby and its favorite holocaust survivor. I regarded historians as scholars who engaged in adequate research following some strict procedures. When I was young I even considered becoming an historian.
When I was young and naive I was also somehow convinced that what they told us about our ‘collective’ Jewish past really happened. I believed it all, the Kingdom of David, Massada, and then the Holocaust: the soap, the lampshade*, the death march, the six million.
As it happened, it took me many years to understand that the Holocaust, the core belief of the contemporary Jewish faith, was not at all an historical narrative for historical narratives do not need the protection of the law and politicians. It took me years to grasp that my great-grandmother wasn’t made into a ‘soap’ or a ‘lampshade’*. She probably perished out of exhaustion, typhus or maybe even by mass shooting. This was indeed bad and tragic enough, however not that different from the fate of many millions of Ukrainians who learned what communism meant for real. “Some of the worst mass murderers in history were Jews” writes Zionist Sever Plocker on the Israeli Ynet disclosing the Holodomor and Jewish involvement in this colossal crime, probably the greatest crime of the 20th century. The fate of my great-grandmother was not any different from hundreds of thousands of German civilians who died in an orchestrated indiscriminate bombing, because they were Germans. Similarly, people in Hiroshima died just because they were Japanese. 1 million Vietnamese died just because they were Vietnamese and 1.3 million Iraqis died because they were Iraqis. In short the tragic circumstances of my great grandmother wasn’t that special after all.
It Doesn’t make sense
It took me years to accept that the Holocaust narrative, in its current form, doesn’t make any historical sense. Here is just one little anecdote to elaborate on:
If, for instance, the Nazis wanted the Jews out of their Reich (Judenrein – free of Jews), or even dead, as the Zionist narrative insists, how come they marched hundreds of thousands of them back into the Reich at the end of the war? I have been concerned with this simple question for more than a while. I eventually launched into an historical research of the topic and happened to learn from Israeli holocaust historian professor Israel Gutman that Jewish prisoners actually joined the march voluntarily. Here is a testimony taken from Gutman’s book
“One of my friends and relatives in the camp came to me on the night of the evacuation and offered a common hiding place somewhere on the way from the camp to the factory. …The intention was to leave the camp with one of the convoys and to escape near the gate, using the darkness we thought to go a little far from the camp. The temptation was very strong. And yet, after I considered it all I then decided to join (the march) with all the other inmates and to share their fate ” (Israel Gutman [editor], People and Ashes: Book Auschwitz – Birkenau, Merhavia 1957).
I am left puzzled here, if the Nazis ran a death factory in Auschwitz-Birkenau, why would the Jewish prisoners join them at the end of the war? Why didn’t the Jews wait for their Red liberators?
I think that 65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, we must be entitled to start to ask the necessary questions. We should ask for some conclusive historical evidence and arguments rather than follow a religious narrative that is sustained by political pressure and laws. We should strip the holocaust of its Judeo-centric exceptional status and treat it as an historical chapter that belongs to a certain time and place
65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz we should reclaim our history and ask why? Why were the Jews hated? Why did European people stand up against their next door neighbours? Why are the Jews hated in the Middle East, surely they had a chance to open a new page in their troubled history? If they genuinely planned to do so, as the early Zionists claimed, why did they fail? Why did America tighten its immigration laws amid the growing danger to European Jews? We should also ask for what purpose do the holocaust denial laws serve? What is the holocaust religion there to conceal? As long as we fail to ask questions, we will be subjected to Zionists and their Neocons agents’ plots. We will continue killing in the name of Jewish suffering. We will maintain our complicity in Western imperialist crimes against humanity.
As devastating as it may be, at a certain moment in time, a horrible chapter was given an exceptionally meta-historical status. Its ‘factuality’ was sealed by draconian laws and its reasoning was secured by social and political settings. The Holocaust became the new Western religion. Unfortunately, it is the most sinister religion known to man. It is a license to kill, to flatten, no nuke, to wipe, to rape, to loot and to ethnically cleanse. It made vengeance and revenge into a Western value. However, far more concerning is the fact that it robs humanity of its heritage, it is there to stop us from looking into our past with dignity. Holocaust religion robs humanity of its humanism. For the sake of peace and future generations, the holocaust must be stripped of its exceptional status immediately. It must be subjected to thorough historical scrutiny. Truth and truth seeking is an elementary human experience. It must prevail.
*During WWII and after it was widely believed that soaps and lampshades were being mass produced from the bodies of Jewish victims. In recent years the Israeli Holocaust museum admitted that there was no truth in any of those accusations.
Israel’s Lobby Imposes Crippling Sanctions on America — Again
By Grant Smith, March 12, 2010
The Israel lobby’s campaign against US and international corporations doing business with Iran is gearing up this week. The tip of the spear is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee sponsored expansion of the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996. If signed into law by president Obama, the legislation would institute onerous new monitoring to ensure exports never enter Iran, along with mandatory divestment from and penalties for any corporations discovered doing business in Iran. A new type of “office of special plans” at the Treasury Department that AIPAC and its think tank lobbied to create by executive order in 2004 is also on the warpath. Stuart Levey, the head of the office of “Terrorism and Financial Intelligence” is traveling to Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Oman “pointing out that they face dramatic risks by doing business with Iran.” Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon finished a long set of meetings urging the US National Security Council to impose harsh sanctions on Iran.
The New York Times started the week with a list of corporations doing business in Iran and their US government procurement revenues. Most companies on this list long ago appeared on hit lists compiled by AIPAC for quiet divestment campaigns in state legislatures across the country. The New York Times ominously highlights in red any company that may be a “possible violator of the Iran Sanctions Act.” National Public Radio’s Scott Simon, after reading it, was apoplectic. He fretted aloud on the air whether US companies and subsidiaries on the target list were “betraying their country’s national security interests.”
What should Americans make of this drive to label all companies doing business with Iran unpatriotic smugglers? First, they should consider the source of the multi-tiered Iran sanctions drive. Then, they should start getting angry.
The proto Israel lobby was born in the cradle of a real arms theft and smuggling operation [pdf] that relentlessly preyed on the United States in the 1940s. Violating US arms export controls and bans on weapons transfers to the Middle East, this network certainly did “betray national security” — but managed to establish a small state in Palestine. The Director of US Central Intelligence judged that “U.S. national security is unfavorably affected by these developments and that it could be seriously jeopardized by continued illicit traffic in the implements of war.” That was an understatement, but none of the financiers of the arms smuggling network ever faced any consequences. When The Pledge, a tell-all book about the smuggling network, was published in 1970 the Department of Justice received public protests about the vast unpunished arms smuggling. The Internal Security Section duly wrote and internally circulated a 9-page book report about the people, dates, and crimes committed. The Chief of the Foreign Agents Registration Unit then responded to one protester that any arms smuggling prosecutions would be barred by the statute of limitations, though he did forward complaints to the FBI and State Department.
The Israel lobby further developed the ethos that “no crime for Israel would be punished in the US” when it allegedly stole and smuggled US weapons grade uranium from NUMEC, “an Israeli operation from the beginning” according to CIA Tel Aviv station chief John Hadden. A secret nuclear arsenal would allow Israel to initiate “The Samson Option” pulling down the entire world if it were ever threatened — a capability judged worth all the stealing and law breaking.
Isaiah L. Kenen, a propaganda officer for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs office in New York in 1948, made it his business to infiltrate Israeli government mandates into US political party platforms while dodging Department of Justice orders that he register and conduct his business openly as an Israeli foreign agent. Like AIPAC this week, Kenen even used the New York Times as a trumpet in his November 2, 1961 Near East Report to deny that Dimona was a nuclear weapons plant. Six weeks after the DOJ cracked down with its final Foreign Agent order on Kenen and company in 1963 after a massive (Israeli-funded) stealth propaganda and lobbying campaign that rivaled the one currently unfurling in the US, Kenen was forced to abandon his American Zionist Council front for the Israeli government, and incorporated AIPAC in Washington, DC. AIPAC went on to stage a full assault on US governance — from attacking the sanctity of our electoral process to trafficking in classified national security information — all to acquire unprecedented power on behalf of its foreign principals.
The most relevant example of AIPAC-Israeli government tag-team law-breaking went on display this week in the form of 49 declassified FBI files. In 1984 71 major US corporations and worker organizations said “no” to an earlier AIPAC economic power grab (a demand to lower all US import barriers to Israeli products while allowing Israel to continue blocking US exports). Israeli minister of economics Dan Halpern stole [pdf] a US government document containing proprietary information and business secrets supplied by US industries most opposed to the Israel Lobby’s economic power grab. Halpern passed it to AIPAC, which made great use of it to undermine the entire advice and consent process. Douglas Bloomfield, AIPAC’s top lobbyist, even made an illicit copy of the classified document after AIPAC was explicitly ordered to return it to the US government (rather than ever do time in jail, Bloomfield now fantasizes about militarily playing the United Arab Emirates off Iran).
The aftermath of this earlier economic crime against US industry has now become clear. By locking many US products of export quantity out of Israel, the trade agreement has delivered an $80 billion dollar cumulative deficit (adjusted for inflation) to the US since enacted. In contrast, last year all other (legitimate) bilateral agreements with such countries as Singapore and Morocco actually produced a $86.33 billion total trade surplus to the US. AIPAC’s trajectory clearly indicates it is a true believer of Julius Caesar’s dictum “If you must break the law, do it to seize power, in all other cases observe it.” But does such ill-gotten might make right?
Americans should be outraged that a foreign lobby like AIPAC is actually trying to write the rules — when warranted application of the law would have abolished it years ago. AIPAC and other nodes of Israel’s lobby successfully broke important US laws to seize power in America. They now expect US private enterprise and workers — the world’s best — to open their own little “offices of special plans” to carefully track company products, profits, and investments in the name of Israel. But this new tax ignores some mighty important facts.
Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and there’s no evidence that it is anywhere near producing nuclear weapons. Non-signatory Israel, with its vast secret arsenal of nuclear weapons — likely built with uranium stolen (but never paid for) from the United States — suddenly demands rule of law from America. Laws drafted by AIPAC. (And by the way, it’ll cost taxpayers at least $76 million to clean up the nuclear waste at NUMEC.)
Israel and its US lobby actually think Americans will go for all of this, that we’re a forgetful and obedient lot, who don’t care much about our laws, economy, or jobs — who are just aching to get into AIPAC’s newly fabricated economic straightjacket.
Better think again.
US general says no evidence of links between Venezuela and FARC-ETA
AFP | March 11, 2010
The general in charge of US military activities in Latin America said Thursday he had no evidence of links between Venezuela’s leftist government and Colombian and Basque guerrilla groups. “We have not seen any connections specifically that I can verify that there has been a direct government-to-terrorist connection,” General Douglas Fraser, head of the US Southern Command, told a Senate hearing.
“We have continued to watch very closely for any connections between illicit and terrorist organization activity within the region,” he said. “We are concerned about it. I’m skeptical. I continue to watch for it.”
Fraser’s comments follow charges by a Spanish judge linking alleged assassination plots in Spain by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Basque separatist group ETA to Venezuelan “governmental support.”
Venezuela has rejected the charges, which raised tensions with Spain.
Arturo Valenzuela, the assistant secretary of state responsible for Latin American affairs, told another congressional panel Wednesday there had been some evidence of some kind of Venezuelan assistance to the FARC.
Fraser, however, said he was aware only of “old evidence” of assistance.
“But I don’t see that evidence. I can’t tell you specifically whether that continues or not,” he said.
AIPAC seeks ‘crippling’ sanctions against Iran
Middle East Online | March 10, 2010
WASHINGTON – Powerful pro-Israel US lobby group AIPAC, in a rare letter to every member of the US Congress, called Tuesday for “crippling new sanctions on Iran” over Tehran’s suspect nuclear program.
“Iran has pursued a nuclear weapons capability… the United States must take action now,” it said.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee also pressed Congress to look into why companies that do business with Iran’s energy sector have never been punished under a 1996 US law aimed at discouraging such investments.
In the letter, signed by executive director Howard Kohr and president David Victor, AIPAC expressed “outrage” over a recent New York Times report charging that Washington gave billions of dollars to firms that do business in Iran.
They called on lawmakers to enact “without delay” legislation that would punish firms engaged in Tehran’s energy sector or that provide technology to Tehran by denying them US government contracts.
AIPAC urged the Congress to “demand” that President Barack Obama’s administration “enforce existing sanctions law and impose crippling new sanctions on Iran.”
“In addition to these actions, we hope you will join with us in urging the administration to impose tough new multilateral sanctions with like-minded states without delay while continuing to pursue the widest possible sanctions through the UN Security Council,” it said.
The letter came as US lawmakers stepped up calls for new sanctions on Iran ahead of November US mid-term elections.
But the US faces an uphill battle in its bid to forge consensus in the UN Security Council for new, tougher sanctions on Iran, diplomats say.
Israeli, US military leaders discuss using ‘force’
Israel’s UN Ambassador Gabriela Shalev said Tuesday that prospects were poor for adoption by the 15-member council of “crippling” punitive measures against Iran.
“The chances now seem grim regarding sanctions that will be crippling,” Shalev told reporters, in large part because veto-wielding council members Russia and China, appear reluctant to back a new round of tough sanctions proposed by Washington.
“The Chinese and the Russians still hope that diplomacy will work. They do not want to inflict any harm on the Iranian people,” she added.
Adoption of a resolution requires at least nine votes from the council and no veto from its five permanent members: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.
As with previous resolutions, they fully expect to tone down their sanctions to make them more palatable to China, Russia and other council members concerned about the impact tough penalties might have on the Iranian people.
Diplomats here say a new sanctions resolution was still being negotiated in capitals by the six powers — the five permanent council members plus Germany — engaged in the nuclear bargaining with Tehran.
Shalev said that if the council was unable to agree on strong sanctions, then Israel “will look to the countries themselves” to slap additional bilateral sanctions. She was referring to the United States and members of the European Union.
On Monday, Israeli Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom said that it was time for the Security Council to impose “crippling” sanctions on Iran..
Shalev said the world was edging closer to “two bad options”: Iran continuing to race towards nuclear capacity or Tehran being stopped only “by force.”
She said the second possibility was currently being discussed by senior US and Israeli political and military leaders, but declined to provide further details.
Diplomats said Brazil, Turkey and Lebanon, three non-permanent members of the Council, also have misgivings about new sanctions and may abstain in a vote.
Iran insists it has the right to develop nuclear technology, which it says is aimed at generating energy for its growing population which is already dependant on importing 40% of its gasoline needs.
Iran also cites the need to develop nuclear technology for medical purposes to treat its cancer patients.
Israel is the only country in the Middle East that actually has nuclear weapons.
American elites abandon their faux regret over Iraq
By Glenn Greenwald | March 10, 2010
The New York Times‘ Tom Friedman, who did as much as any single individual to persuade large numbers of Democrats and “moderates” to support the invasion of Iraq, today writes:
Former President George W. Bush’s gut instinct that this region craved and needed democracy was always right. It should have and could have been pursued with much better planning and execution. This war has been extraordinarily painful and costly. But democracy was never going to have a virgin birth in a place like Iraq, which has never known any such thing.
Some argue that nothing that happens in Iraq will ever justify the costs. Historians will sort that out. Personally, at this stage, I only care about one thing: that the outcome in Iraq be positive enough and forward-looking enough that those who have actually paid the price — in lost loved ones or injured bodies, in broken homes or broken lives, be they Iraqis or Americans or Brits — see Iraq evolve into something that will enable them to say that whatever the cost, it has given freedom and decent government to people who had none.
[To paraphrase] – Sure, the war that I helped sell and cheered on led to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings (at least), the long-term displacement of millions more, and the complete destruction of another country that had done nothing to us. But I’m not interested in clouding my mind with any of that. I don’t care about that. That can be talked about once I’m dead. After all, as the great humanitarian Joseph Stalin taught us, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and as the great scholar and torturer Condoleezza Rice explained, we should just gently shut our eyes and think about the massive slaughter and destruction we caused in that country as mere “birth pangs” on the road to something beautiful.
Back in 2003, I said — with bloodthirsty sadism rabidly drooling from my mouth — that the real purpose of the war, what made it the Right Thing to do, was that we needed to make large numbers of Muslims “suck. on. this” in order to show them we mean business, and we randomly picked Iraq because . . . . we could. But now — to justify the enormous amounts of blood I helped spill and the incalculable amounts of human suffering I helped spawn — I’m going to pretend that I was motivated by a magnanimous, noble desire to Spread Freedom.
***
It was only a matter of time before American elites abandoned their faux regret over Iraq. For tribalists and nationalists, America can err in its execution but never in its motives. There’s no question — as this glorifying, propagandistic Newsweek cover story reflects — that it’s now official dogma that this was the right thing to do, or at least that we produced something great and wonderful for that country, as was our intent all along (leaving aside the what is actually happening in Iraq). It’s nothing short of nauseating to watch those responsible glorify what they did without weighing — or, in Friedman’s case, affirmatively dismissing as irrelevant — the extreme amounts of death and suffering that they caused, all based on false pretenses. But this is why Tom Friedman is the favorite propagandist of “Washington insiders”— because he feeds them the justifications they need to feel good about themselves. Forget all those innocent dead people and destruction you caused; it all worked out in the end.
Featured Video
John Mearsheimer: Toward All-Out War With Both Russia & Iran
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
“Evidence-based medicine has been hijacked:” A confession from John Ioannidis
Retraction Watch – March 16, 2016
John Ioannidis is perhaps best known for a 2005 paper “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.” One of the most highly cited researchers in the world, Ioannidis, a professor at Stanford, has built a career in the field of meta-research. Earlier this month, he published a heartfelt and provocative essay in the the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology titled “Evidence-Based Medicine Has Been Hijacked: A Report to David Sackett.” In it, he carries on a conversation begun in 2004 with Sackett, who died last May and was widely considered the father of evidence-based medicine. We asked Ioannidis to expand on his comments in the essay, including why he believes he is a “failure.” … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Operation Geschäftsfreund: How West Germany Paid for Israel’s Nuclear Bomb
- Italian port authorities halt Israel-bound shipments of ‘military-grade steel’ from India
- Kata’ib Hezbollah warns Jordan over allowing US-Israeli reconnaissance missions against Iraq
- China firmly supports Cuba in safeguarding sovereignty, security
- US-Israeli war on Iran unlikely to resume due to global opposition: Pakistani defense minister
- Estonia shoots down alleged Ukrainian drone
- Trita Parsi: Iran War Marks the End of American Primacy
- General strike across Italy in solidarity with Gaza and in protest against the attack on Sumud Flotilla
- Iran says any agreement with US must end war on all fronts, lift blockade and sanctions
- Iran asserts sovereign rights over Hormuz fiber-optic routes
- If Americans Knew
- Who on Earth Feels Threatened by a Nun?
- Antisemitism? Really? The 33 Most Absurd Examples Listed in the ADL’s New Database
- Gaza’s water crisis: Families survive on less than 10 liters a day amid Israel’s ongoing genocide
- Why the Zionist Establishment Wants Progressives Talking About ICE Instead of Gaza
- The Media’s Double Standards on Rape in Palestine and Israel
- Leaked Documents Show Cisco Systems’ Deep Relationship with Israeli Security State
- Israel Can Sue New York Times Over Sexual Abuse Allegations, But Can’t Erase the Truth
- Israeli military commits piracy (again), kidnaps “hundreds” of humanitarians – Daily Update
- Israeli Soldiers Kill A Palestinian Teacher In Jenin
- Earworm Kars4Kids jingle yanked from California airwaves for false advertising
- No Tricks Zone
- Even The DNA Of Single-Celled Plankton Can Upend Alarmist Arctic Sea Ice Melt Claims
- Scandal: Although Climate Panic Is Canceled By IPCC, Europe’s Policymakers Continue With Their Crushing Policies
- How Once Hardcore Climate Alarmist Lucy Biggers Realized It Was All A Scam, Brainwashing
- German Expert: “No Climate Crisis” …”Warming Generally Better For Humanity”
- New Paleo Research: Modern ‘Climate Change’ Has Had No Apparent Impact On Precipitation Patterns
- 90% Subsidized… Bielefeld Germany’s €7 Million Hydrogen Garbage Truck Fleet Sits Idle
- New Study: Declining Trends In 1980-2023 Tropical Cyclone Frequency, Accumulated Energy
- 46 IPCC Scientists Break Rank, Publicly Challenge Long-Standing Dogmatic Climate Claims
- Another Study Links Warming To Cloud Forcing, Shortwave Radiation, Natural Atmospheric Circulation
- Wind Energy Is Toxic, Hazardous To Human Health, Scientific Review Shows
Aletho News 