The draft of a strategic deal between Washington and Kabul envisions giving the United States the authority to set up permanent military bases in Afghanistan.
American and Afghan official are set to discuss the deal at Loya Jirga (Traditional Grand Assembly) with tribal elders and political figures.
The recently-released draft shows that the US would be able to establish permanent military bases in Shindand, Shorabak, Kandahar, Bagram, and Khost.
According to the agreement, Washington can set up more military bases in other parts of Afghanistan whenever it deems necessary.
The military bases, which will be run based on US Army regulations, would be in complete control of the US government.
The Afghan airspace will be handed over to American forces after the strategic deal comes into effect.
If an agreement is reached on the permanent bases, US troops will remain on Afghan soil beyond 2014, when they are scheduled to transfer their security responsibilities to Afghan forces.
The draft also states that all US military and civilian personnel must act according to the American constitution at the time of military operations.
A TV series about an Amazonian tribe has been slammed as ‘staged, false, fabricated and distorted’ by experts on the tribe.
‘Mark & Olly: Living with the Machigenga’ was shown on the Travel Channel in the US, and on the BBC last year. In the show Mark Anstice and Olly Steeds lived in a Matsigenka Indian village for several months to show the ‘reality’ of life among the tribe.
But now two experts on the tribe have gone public with a string of highly damaging accusations. Dr. Glenn Shepard is an anthropologist who has worked with the Matsigenka Indians for 25 years and speaks their language fluently. Ron Snell, the son of US missionaries, grew up with the tribe and and is also fluent in the Matsigenkas’ tongue.
• In order to present a ‘false and insulting’ portrayal of the tribe as sex-obsessed, mean and savage, many of the translations of what the Indians are saying are fabricated.
• Many events presented as real in the show must have been ‘staged’.
• A key scene in the show in which Olly is subjected to painful ant stings, since “according to Matsigenka tradition he must be cleansed” and “endure the ancient punishments” for buying deer meat is denounced by Shepard as ‘fabricated and [with] no basis in ethnography.’
Ron Snell, in an article on his blog, accused the film-makers of ‘paying the Machiguengas to perform for them, saying things the Machiguengas wouldn’t ordinarily say and doing things the Machiguengas wouldn’t normally do.’
After interviewing two of the Indians in the series, Snell reported, ‘Our suspicions were correct. They [Mark and Olly] entered the village on a well traveled path and only veered a few feet off the path to film themselves ‘hacking their way through the jungle.’ They contracted someone to make new cushmas [cotton tunics] so everyone would be wearing one. They staged the whole drama about one of the guys being accepted and the other treated as a lazy outsider…
‘The translator quickly became disillusioned with the whole thing, but kept going because of the money. He is ashamed and embarrassed that he had anything to do with it.’
The series was previously at the centre of a media storm when a scouting expedition for the show was accused in Peru of provoking a flu epidemic among isolated Indians which caused the deaths of four of them. The show was eventually filmed a short distance from this incident.
Cicada, the production company responsible for the series, has made no comment on the accusations.
Stephen Corry, Director of Survival, said, ‘‘Mark & Olly: Living with the Machigenga’ was a depressing example of the way tribal people are routinely portrayed on TV. One stereotype followed another, with the Matsigenka variously portrayed as callous, perverted, cruel, and savage. Is this what the film crew really thought of those whose guests they were? Broadcasters wouldn’t dare to make similarly false claims about other such minority groups: imagine the same descriptions applied to any ethnic minority in the industrialized world. Sadly this is all too common – TV is now getting away with portrayals which wouldn’t be out of place in the Victorian era.’
In response to a worrying trend to portray tribal peoples in a negative manner, Survival is drawing up a code of practice for documentary makers to follow when filming with them.
A background briefing with further examples of mistranslations and inaccuracies in the show is available to download here.
Note to Editors:
1. The tribe’s name is today usually spelt Matsigenka. Previously, Machiguenga was more common. Machigenga, as used in the Mark and Olly TV show, is incorrect.
2. Dr. Glenn Shepard is an ethnobotanist and medical anthropologist who specializes in the indigenous peoples of the Amazon. He has published more than 50 scientific papers and is currently a researcher in Indigenous Ethnology at the Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi in Belém, Brazil.
3. Ron Snell grew up with the Matsigenka, where his parents were missionaries. He is the author of several books about his childhood there, and still visits the area regularly. He is now the director of a homeless people’s shelter in Nebraska, USA. His mother, who has also watched the series and corroborates the accusations, is the author of a 900-page Matsigenka dictionary.
Secret British policy discloses intelligence officers could get information from tortured prisoners.
A top-secret document has confirmed that British intelligence officers were allowed to get information from detainees who were being illegally tortured overseas.
The British government has been part of the torture policy for almost a decade, trying to repress the document, making a series of false statements. The document showed how the UK government allowed MI6 and MI5 to be involved in torture and then cover up that involvement.
The interrogation policy, which is claimed to be sensitive and therefore cannot be made public at the government inquiry into the UK’s role in torture and rendition, instructed high-ranking intelligence officers to “weigh the importance of the information being sought against the amount of pain they expected a prisoner to suffer,” the document read.
A copy of the secret policy demonstrated that British ministers and intelligence officers worried that the revelation of the secret document would put public safety at risk, adding the disclosure would also damage the reputation of the UK agencies.
“If the possibility exists that information will be or has been obtained through the mistreatment of detainees, the negative consequences may include any potential adverse effects on national security if the fact of the agency seeking or accepting information in those circumstances were to be publicly revealed.
“For instance, it is possible that in some circumstances such a revelation could result in further radicalisation, leading to an increase in the threat from terrorism,” one section read.
Human rights groups and lawyers have strongly opposed the decision that the interrogation of policy document and other similar secret papers would not be made public at the inquiry into the country’s involvement in torture and rendition.
Ten human rights groups, including Liberty, Reprieve, and Amnesty International expressed their refusal to give evidence or participate in the hearings, as the inquiry does not have “credibility or transparency,” and it’s arrangements are “secretive, unfair and deeply flawed.”
The inquiry led by Sir Peter Gibson, a retired judge, would begin after police investigation into torture accusations are completed.
This is while that, there is no evidence that the UK intelligence was directly involved in torturing the prisoners, because the intelligence officers left jails when the torture sessions began and returned only after the prisoners were physically abused.
In the case of Zeeshan Siddiqui, a British national suspected of having links with al-Qaeda who was captured by Pakistani officials in 2005, Human Rights Watch revealed that Siddiqui “reported being repeatedly beaten, chained, injected with drugs and threatened with further torture and sexual abuse.” He insisted that after being tortured, British intelligence officers began his investigation.
Human Rights Watch also takes the case of Salahuddin Amin as an example. Amin, also a British citizen, accused of plotting attacks on UK targets, was “repeatedly tortured by Pakistan’s notorious Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) and forced into a laundry list of false confessions”.
While he was being tortured he “was met by British intelligence officials on almost half a dozen occasions. He would be tortured, then forced back to his cell to do ‘homework,’ wherein he would provide a written confession at ISI instruction, then meet British interrogators the next day, who would ask questions on the same subjects. If the ISI felt his answers to the British agents were unsatisfactory, he would be told that he had embarrassed them ‘in front of our friends’ and be punished with further torture,” Amin said.
Being a U.S. war criminal means never having to say sorry. Paul Tibbets, the man who flew the Enola Gay and destroyed Hiroshima, lived to the impressive age of 92 without publicly expressing guilt for what he had done. He had even reenacted his infamous mission at a 1976 Texas air show, complete with a mushroom cloud, and later said he never meant this to be offensive. In contrast, he called it a “damn big insult” when the Smithsonian planned an exhibit in 1995 showing some of the damage the bombing caused.
We might understand a man not coming to terms with his most important contribution to human history being such a destructive act. But what about the rest of the country?
It’s sickening that Americans even debate the atomic bombings, as they do every year in early August. Polls in recent years reveal overwhelming majorities of the American public accepting the acts as necessary.
Conservatives are much worse on this topic, although liberals surely don’t give it the weight it deserves. Trent Lott was taken to the woodshed for his comments in late 2002 about how Strom Thurmond would have been a better president than Truman. Lott and Thurmond both represent ugly strains in American politics, but no one dared question the assumption that Thurmond was obviously a less defensible candidate than Truman. Zora Neale Hurston, heroic author of the Harlem Renaissance, might have had a different take, as she astutely called Truman “a monster” and “the butcher of Asia.” Governmental segregation is terrible, but why is murdering hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians with as much thought as one would give to eradicating silverfish treated as simply a controversial policy decision in comparison?
Perhaps it is the appeal to necessity. We hear that the United States would have otherwise had to invade the Japanese mainland and so the bombings saved American lives. But saving U.S. soldiers wouldn’t justify killing Japanese children any more than saving Taliban soldiers would justify dropping bombs on American children. Targeting civilians to manipulate their government is the very definition of terrorism. Everyone was properly horrified by Anders Behring Breivik’s murder spree in Norway last month – killing innocents to alter diplomacy. Truman murdered a thousand times as many innocents on August 6, 1945, then again on August 9.
It doesn’t matter if Japan “started it,” either. Only individuals have rights, not nations. Unless you can prove that every single Japanese snuffed out at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was involved in the Pearl Harbor attack, the murderousness of the bombings is indisputable. Even the official history should doom Truman to a status of permanent condemnation. Besides being atrocious in themselves, the U.S. creation and deployment of the first nuclear weapons ushered in the seemingly endless era of global fear over nuclear war.
However, as it so happens, the official history is a lie. The U.S. provoked the Japanese to fire the first shot, as more and more historians have acknowledged. Although the attack on Pearl Harbor, a military base, was wrong, it was far less indefensible than the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s civilian populations.
As for the utilitarian calculus of “saving American lives,” historian Ralph Raico explains:
The propaganda that the atomic bombings saved lives was nothing but a public relations pitch contrived in retrospect. These were just gratuitous acts of mass terrorism. By August 1945, the Japanese were completely defeated, blockaded, starving. They were desperate to surrender. All they wanted was to keep their emperor, which was ultimately allowed anyway. The U.S. was insisting upon unconditional surrender, a purely despotic demand. Given what the Allies had done to the Central Powers, especially Germany, after the conditional surrender of World War I, it’s understandable that the Japanese resisted the totalitarian demand for unconditional surrender.
A 1946 U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey determined the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nukings were not decisive in ending the war. Most of the political and military brass agreed. “The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing,” said Dwight Eisenhower in a 1963 interview with Newsweek.
Another excuse we hear is the specter of Hitler getting the bomb first. This is a non sequitur. By the time the U.S. dropped the bombs, Germany was defeated and its nuclear program was revealed to be nothing in comparison to America’s. The U.S. had 180,000 people working for several years on the Manhattan Project. The Germans had a small group led by a few elite scientists, most of whom were flabbergasted on August 6, as they had doubted such bombs were even possible. Even if the Nazis had gotten the bomb – which they were very far from getting – it wouldn’t in any way justify killing innocent Japanese.
For more evidence suggesting that the Truman administration was out to draw Japanese blood for its own sake, or as a show of force for reasons of Realpolitik, consider the United States’s one-thousand-plane bombing of Tokyo on August 14, the largest bombing raid of the Pacific war, after Hirohito agreed to surrender and the Japanese state made it clear it wanted peace. The bombing of Nagasaki should be enough to know it was not all about genuinely stopping the war as painlessly as possible – why not wait more than three days for the surrender to come? But to strategically bomb Japan five days after the destruction Nagasaki, as Japan was in the process of waving the white flag? It’s hard to imagine a greater atrocity, or clearer evidence that the U.S. government was not out to secure peace, but instead to slaughter as many Japanese as it could before consolidating its power for the next global conflict.
The U.S. had, by the time of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, destroyed 67 Japanese cities by firebombing, in addition to helping the British destroy over a hundred cities in Germany. In this dramatic footage from The Fog of War, Robert McNamara describes the horror he helped unleash alongside General Curtis LeMay, with images of the destroyed Japanese cities and an indication of what it would have meant for comparably sized cities in the United States:
“Killing fifty to ninety percent of the people in 67 Japanese cities and then bombing them with two nuclear bombs is not proportional – in the minds of some people – to the objectives we were trying to achieve,” McNamara casually says. Indeed, this was clearly murderous, and Americans are probably the most resistant of all peoples to the truths of their government’s historical atrocities. It doesn’t hurt that the U.S. government has suppressed for years evidence such as film footage shot after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yet even based on what has long been uncontroversial historical fact, we should all be disgusted and horrified by what the U.S. government did.
How would it have been if all those Germans and Japanese, instead of being burned to death from the sky, were corralled into camps and shot or gassed? Materially, it would have been the same. But Americans refuse to think of bombings as even in the same ballpark as other technologically expedient ways of exterminating people by the tens and hundreds of thousands. Why? Because the U.S. government has essentially monopolized terror bombing for nearly a century. No one wants to confront the reality of America’s crimes against humanity.
It would be one thing if Americans were in wide agreement that their government, like that of the Axis governments of World War II, had acted in a completely indefensible manner. But they’re not. The Allies were the white hats. Ignore the fact that the biggest belligerent on America’s side was Stalin’s Russia, whom the FDR and Truman administrations helped round up a million or two refugees to enslave and murder in the notorious undertaking known as Operation Keelhaul. We’re not supposed to think about that. World War II began with Pearl Harbor and it ended with D-Day and American sailors returning home to kiss their sweethearts who had kept America strong by working on assembly lines.
In the Korean war, another Truman project, the U.S. policy of shameful mass murder continued. According to historian Bruce Cumings, professor at the University of Chicago, millions of North Korean civilians were slaughtered by U.S. fire-bombings, chemical weapons and newly developed ordnance, some of which weighed in at 12,000 pounds. Eighteen out of 22 major cities were at least half destroyed. For a period in 1950, the US dropped about 800 tons of bombs on North Korea every day. Developed at the end of World War II, napalm got its real start in Korea. The US government also targeted civilian dams, causing massive flooding.
In Indochina, the U.S. slaughtered millions in a similar fashion. Millions of tons of explosives were dropped on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. These ghastly weapons are literally still killing people – tens of thousands have died since the war ended, and three farmers were killed just last week. Among the horrible effects of the bombing was the rise of Pol Pot’s regime, probably the worst in history on a per capita basis.
The U.S. has committed mass terrorism since, although not on quite the scale as in past generations. Back in the day the U.S. would drop tons of explosives, knowing that thousands would die in an instant. In today’s wars, it drops explosives and then pretends it didn’t mean to kill the many civilians who predictably die in such acts of violence. Only fifteen hundred bombs were used to attack Baghdad in March 2003. That’s what passes as progress. The naked murderousness of U.S. foreign policy, however, is still apparent. The bombings of water treatment facilities and sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s deliberately targeted the vulnerable Iraqi people. Once the type of atrocities the U.S. committed in World War II have been accepted as at the worst debatable tactics in diplomacy, anything goes.
American politicians would have us worry about Iran, a nation that hasn’t attacked another country in centuries, one day getting the bomb. There is no evidence that the Iranians are even seeking nuclear weapons. But even if they were, the U.S. has a much worse record in both warmongering and nuclear terror than Iran or any other country in modern times. It is more than hypocritical for the U.S. to pose as the leader of global peace and nuclear disarmament.
The hypocrisy and moral degeneracy in the mouths of America’s celebrated leaders should frighten us more than anything coming out of Iran or North Korea, especially given America’s capacity to kill and willingness to do it. Upon dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, President Truman called the bomb the “greatest achievement of organized science in history” and wondered aloud how “atomic power can become a powerful and forceful influence toward the maintenance of world peace.” Nothing inverts good and evil, progress and regress, as much as the imperial state. In describing the perversion of morality in the history of U.S. wars, Orwell’s “war is peace” doesn’t cut it. “Exterminating civilians by the millions is the highest of all virtues” is perhaps a better tagline for the U.S. terror state.
Nathan Guttman at Moment discusses “myths” about the Jewish vote and concedes my points: Jews really don’t swing any state except maybe Florida, and the reason politicians pander to Jews is because of the money we bring to the process. Just imagine if evangelical Christians were so important in the process; would we ever hear the end of it in the liberal press? Do evangelicals have political diversity– I bet they do. And speaking of diversity, where is ours? Guttman also says that Jews don’t vote on Israel, but states that it’s a “threshhold” issue, and so long as a politician supports aid to Israel and is against an imposed solution on Israel, he’s fine. I.e., the issue isn’t politicized in our process. Everyone’s for that or they can’t play. Guttman:
• Myth: Jews can tip a swing state.
Rarely. The 2000 elections helped establish the myth that Jewish voters hold the power to decide a tight race. As election officials scrutinized ballots in Florida, some seemed to see an elderly Jewish swing voter behind every hanging chad. Florida remains an important battleground, and given the divided political makeup of the state and its large Jewish population, Jewish sun birds really can make a difference. Ohio is also a state where Jewish voters could play a role in a close race, although so far they haven’t. But the vast majority of Jewish voters vote in states that aren’t really in play, like New York and California, and their vote will hardly be noticed.
Maybe. It is commonly believed that more than half of political donations to Democratic races and more than a third of those to Republican races come from Jewish donors. Again, there are no hard numbers here, but counting the Cohens and Goldmans on campaign disclosure lists can give a strong impression that Jews are heavily involved in political giving.
The United States Government and its presstitute media have wasted time and energy creating hysteria over a non-existent “debt ceiling crisis.”
After reading the “news” in the Ministry of Propaganda and witnessing the stupidity of the US government, the rest of the world is struck dumbfounded by the immaturity of the “world’s only superpower.”
What kind of superpower is it, the world wonders, that is willing to go to the eleventh hour to convince the world, which holds its banking reserves in US Treasury debt, that the US government will default on the debt?
Every country in the world now worries about the judgment and sanity of the country with the largest nuclear arsenal in the world.
This is the achievement of the Republicans, who took an ordinary commonplace increase in the debt ceiling limit, an event that has occurred routinely many times over the course of my life, and turned it into a crisis threatening the world financial system.
To be clear, there was never any risk whatsoever of US default as President Obama has power established by President George W. Bush’s Presidential Directive 51 to declare default a National Emergency and to set aside the debt ceiling limit and Congress’ power of the purse, and to continue to issue the debt necessary to fund the US government and its wars.
That the American press ever took this highly-hyped “crisis” seriously merely demonstrates their prostitute status.
The US public debt is rising too rapidly against US GDP, although it is still below the percentages during World War II. The problem that is ignored by the idiots in Washington and the presstitutes is that the debt is rising relative to the economy because the economy is not rising, but war expenditures are.
Why is the economy not rising?
It is not rising, because it has been offshored. What formerly was US GDP produced in Gary, Indiana, St. Louis, Detroit, Silicon Valley, and other US locations is now GDP for China, India, Indonesia and other countries where manufacturing labor and professional services can be hired below US rates.
What happens with offshoring? The answer is clear. US GDP, consumer income, career opportunities, and tax base leave the country. Corporate profits and bonuses rise due to the lower labor costs.
Who is this good for?
The answer is that it is only good for Wall Street, corporate shareholders, and corporate management. Their incomes go up, and the GDP goes down along with the employment opportunities of Americans and the tax base for government.
The other destroyer of American economic prospects was the deregulation of the financial sector. Economists theorized that markets were self-regulating and created the illusion that greed was never a problem. This was music and dollars to Wall Street’s ears. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and the Wall Street-owned US Treasury jumped on board. Those, who like Brooksley Born, were empowered by US law to regulate derivatives, were driven out of office by the Federal Reserve chairman, the US Treasury secretary, and the Securities and Exchange chairman.
Financial institutions freed from Glass-Steagall, freed from capital requirements, and freed from oversight, immediately took debt leverage on highly unrealistic bets to amazing heights. When the schemes collapsed, the Federal Reserve lent US and foreign banks $16.1 trillion dollars, a sum larger than the US national debt and larger than the US GDP.
Where did the Federal Reserve get $16.1 trillion to lend? The Fed created it out of thin air with a stroke of a computer entry.
While the Federal Reserve created $16.1 trillion in new loans for private banks, the bailed out banks bulldoze the foreclosed homes of the evicted Americans.
So in America, the light unto the world, American citizens are thrown out of their homes in order that banks can bulldoze their homes.
Only in America does this makes sense.
And it is not only Americans who are being made homeless by US policies. Afghans, Pakistanis, Iraqis, Yemenis, Somali, Libyans are also consigned to homelessness by American policy. Moreover, America’s wars against these peoples together with the supporting military/security budget account for 75 percent of the US budget deficit. Indeed, the cost of these wars exceed the planned future budget savings from the debt limit deal.
In other words, the cost of the wars that make millions of foreigners homeless use up revenues that the federal government could have used to keep Americans in their homes and teachers in the schools. As much as many Republicans profess to be concerned about the US public debt, Republicans were not sufficiently concerned to address their issue by cutting back the $1.2 trillion military-security budget or by raising the low tax rates on the mega-rich.
Look at these July 30 headlines, just two days prior to the default deadline, from the online group, Stop NATO:
What in the world is a country facing bankruptcy and default doing conducting military exercises in Mongolia and Central Asia? What is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, designed to counter a Soviet thrust into Western Europe, doing in Mongolia?
Why are these military expenditures necessary, but not expenditures to keep America’s homeless population from rising while homes are destroyed?
The answer is that the Republicans have an agenda: War. And Republicans want to fund this war, not by taxing high incomes but by cutting support programs for the down and out.
To cut to the chase: Even if all the cuts actually happen, the weakening economy will result in new deficit projections that will wipe out the expected savings from the debt limit agreement.
What then will the government do?
Until US policymakers comprehend that the economy has been moved offshore and take steps to bring it home, there will be no solution to America’s debt problem or to its unemployment problem.
~
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary U.S. Treasury, Associate Editor Wall Street Journal, Columnist for Business Week, Senior Research Fellow Hoover Institution Stanford University, and William E. Simon Chair of Political Economy in the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com.
If ‘justice for all’ were more than misty sentiment appended to a perfunctory ‘pledge of allegiance,’ H.R. 2634 — a bill seeking broad and long delayed remedial action on behalf of all Vietnam Era victims of Agent Orange — would sail through Congress and gain swift approval from the President.
Introduced by California Congressman Bob Filner, the senior Democrat on the House Veteran’s Affairs Committee, the proposed ‘Victims of Agent Orange Relief Act’ challenges our lawmakers and our nation to finally confront and repair the chemically induced public health and environmental wreckage that remains the most shameful and unresolved legacy of the U.S. war against Vietnam.
Why is this bill necessary? Let’s review the facts as the proposed bill presents them:
*From 1961 to 1971, approximately 19,000,000 gallons of herbicides, primarily Agent Orange, were sprayed over the southern region of Vietnam, much of it contaminated with deadly dioxin.
*Potentially 4.8 million Vietnamese were exposed to herbicides in this period, resulting in chronic illnesses, shortened life spans, and high rates of birth deformities. Even today, exposure continues in contaminated areas, designated dioxin ‘hot spots,’ and through contact with the food chain.
*Public health resources in Vietnam are inadequate for the necessary care and treatment of Agent Orange victims, many of whom reside in remote rural areas far from available medical and custodial services.
H.R. 2634, which was authored for Representative Filner by the Vietnam Relief and Responsibility Campaign, many of whose members are U.S. veterans of the war, authorizes the creation of programs throughout Vietnam to deliver an appropriate level of medical assistance to the victims, and provide much needed home, respite and daycare services as well.
One component of the bill, moreover, would authorize “assistance to repair and rebuild substandard homes in Vietnam for covered individuals,” as well as proposed funding for the long overdue clean-up of “those areas in Vietnam that continue to contain high levels of dioxin,” a program of critical importance to public health issues associated with on-going exposure to these deadly toxins.
H.R. 2634 is unique in that, presenting upfront the case of the victims in Vietnam, the bill recognizes the failure of American policy as we now approach four decades since the war’s end to recognize the heavy responsibility our government bears for the human suffering and environmental devastation resulting from our chemical assault on the people and land of southern Vietnam.
But the bill by no means limits its remedial reach to the victims within Vietnam. There are generous provisions that will expand programs and research to benefit our own veterans, and create medical centers “designed to address the medical needs of descendants of the veterans of the Vietnam era.” In essence this means that, as in Vietnam, there would be a presumption that certain birth anomalies among the children and grandchildren of exposed victims would be recognized as resulting from contact with Agent Orange.
Finally, H.R. 2634 would launch an assessment and treatment program aimed exclusively at Vietnamese-Americans who lived in Vietnam and parts of Cambodia and Laos during the exposure period from January 9, 1961 through May 7, 1975.
If you want to see the face of justice as it applies to the unfinished business surrounding the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam, give the H.R. 2634 (linked here) a thorough read, and find a way to support it. Will H.R. 2634 get far in today’s troubled political climate? It certainly should, but it’s not very likely.
However if we think of this honorable document, to the degree it is aimed at the victims in Vietnam, as a wedge in an on-going campaign that both the U.S. and Vietnamese governments are anxious to resolve in their bi-lateral relations, its chances of contributing in the not too distant future to the implementation of much that it contains might not be as slim as we imagine.
Former Deputy Head of the Phalange party in Lebanon, Lawyer Rashad Salameh, said some armed and financed factions were behind the recent developments in Syria, and noted that the Syrian state has positively dealt with the legal reform demands, “but it turned out that what was happening on ground was actually an organized military operation.”
In an exclusive interview with Al-Manar Website, Salameh said that a true conspiracy was targeting Syria, and that it may undermine the threats launched by some Western leaders to “isolate” the Syrian regime. He recalled that isolation was not new for Syria, and that Syrians were able to overcome this threat throughout all previous stages.
While expressing confidence in the awareness and sincerity of the Syrian people, he revealed that the Americans have offered to their thugs and allies in Lebanon a “promise” that the Syrian regime would collapse. He said that US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman has assured his allies, during his latest visit to Beirut, that the Assad regime in Syria would be toppled. He put the latest statement made by former Prime Minister Saad Hariri in this context, and expressed belief that Hariri got a cue of the American aims before issuing his statement in which he condemned the Syrian regime.
Concerning the international tribunal, lawyer Salameh said he was fully convinced of Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah’s statement in this regard, and confirmed that the so-called Special Tribunal for Lebanon was violating all international standards. He found it strange how the indictment could turn into a “long and evil American series,” and stressed that serious investigation starts by questioning false witnesses who misled the investigation and, therefore, concealed the true culprits.
CONSPIRACY AGAINST SYRIA… SERIOUS
Lawyer Rashad Salameh told Al-Manar Website that the latest incidents in Syria were proof that the opposition movement, which started with legal reform demands, turned to something else. He noted that the Syrian regime positively dealt with the reform demands, mainly in relation with the multiplicity of parties, amendment of the constitution, holding elections, reinforcing political life, and increasing freedoms.
But Salameh said that incidents showed that military operations were taking place on ground, and backed the idea by pointing to the huge number of martyrs within the security forces and innocent civilians. “This huge number of martyrs signals that there’s an armed and financed side behind the incidents. It also shows that this side was well-prepared for these acts,” he added.
Salameh regretted that some Western states reject seeing the picture in its real form. He said that these sides were not demanding reform but the collapse of the regime. “This is a conspiracy which is using some tools seeking to create strife in Syria,” he warned. “Although they claim they are an opposition in opinion, everything shows they’re not. In fact, we’re before some armed groups that seek to attack official buildings, manipulate the train line, and explode oil pipelines. The Syrians cannot remain silent before such violations, crimes, threats to the general stability and security.”
While stressing that the Syrian army was still unified alongside the majority of the people in support of the current regime, he criticized the stances made by some Western states in support of the armed groups. “Some Western officials give themselves the right to claim, with an order tone, that this regime should end. Such rhetoric strengthens the international conspiracy theory, where some states that we believed to be democratic take part.”
Salameh recalled, in this context, the stances made earlier by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in which he said that, as part of the NATO alliance, he would carry out any decision to militarily interfere in Syria in case such decision was issued by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). He also pointed to the statement made by Syrian former Deputy President Abdul Halim Khaddam who called, through an Israeli TV station, for a military operation in Syria. He said that all these signs show the depth of the conspiracy targeting Syria at this stage.
SYRIA HAS SUFFICIENT IMMUNITY TO RESIST
Lawyer Rashad Salameh commented on the latest stance made by US President Barack Obama in which he declared that the United States will continue to increase its pressure on the Syrian regime, and work with others around the world to isolate Al-Assad’s government.
Salameh pointed to the biased media coverage of the Syrian developments. He noted that some Arab and European media panels, including Italian Television, claimed Sunday that the number of victims exceeded 136 in Hamah only and that the total number of victims throughout Syrian districts exceeded 350. “It turned out that these numbers were not accurate, according to the same panels,” he said.
Concerning the American President’s promise to isolate the Syrian President, Salameh said that such threats are baseless. He recalled that Syria has experienced isolation for over five years, when former US President George W. Bush took the decision to isolate Syria. He said that Syria was able to overcome its crisis and restore its natural role, when France was more moderate.
He also said that Syria did not have fears over the Lebanese situation because Lebanon is a strong state. He said that Lebanon was great because of the resistance’s victories, alongside the Resistance-Army-People balance, which reflected Lebanon’s unity. He further pointed out the tense relations between Turkey and Syria.
While concluding that Syria had enough immunity to stand in the face of the conspiracy, he recalled the previous stage during the rule of late President Hafez Assad. “At that time, Syria was under siege from Turkey, Jordan and at the same time Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Yet, it was able to overcome this status through its relation with Lebanon and mainly, through the strategic relation with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Therefore, this is not the first time in which Syria is targeted.”
AMERICANS PROMISED THEIR ALLIES
Salameh revealed that the Americans have offered their thugs and allies in Lebanon a “promise” that the Syrian regime would collapse. He said that US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman has assured his March 14 allies, during his latest visit to Beirut, that the Assad regime in Syria would be toppled.
Commenting on Feltman’s stance that Syrian President Bachar Assad will not triumph, Salameh noted that it was Feltman who launched such a slogan, not the Syrian nation. “If I was Syrian and I heard such statements, I would have perceived that there was an external danger and that claiming that the issue was purely internal was not true.” He also criticized the American administration’s claims that it refused the interference of anybody in Syria’s affairs “as if it was preventing the whole world, except itself, from interfering in others’ affairs.”
Salameh, who said Feltman’s promise to his allies, over the collapse of the Syrian regime, was not frank, also uncovered that the US diplomat advised his allies to stay silent. “Some of them accepted the advice but others did not,” he said, adding that he did not find strange the latest stance of former Prime Minister Saad Hariri. “Hariri was committed to the advice for a while, but it seemed that he got a dose of American reinforcements, so he issued the delayed statement,” he said. “Hariri must remember that Syria’s stability was an essential condition for Lebanon’s stability, and vice versa. His statement was not useful for Hariri himself, for Lebanon or even for the future of the ties between Lebanon and Syria.”
RADICALS NOT SUITABLE ALTERNATIVE
Salameh said that someone has convinced the American administration and its followers that the fate of the region can be in the hands of specific radicals, given that these radicals could be allies to the US. He warned against such an option, and recalled the dangerous sectarian conflict that recently took place in Egypt. He recalled, in this context, WikiLeaks’ cables that quoted former PM Saad Hariri as advising Jeffrey Feltman to “try Bayanouni (Muslim Brotherhood) and Abdul Halim Khaddam” and telling them that they would find them moderate. “It seemed that the Americans have believed Feltman’s advice and chosen to apply it,” he added.
Salameh, who said he fully trusted the Syrian nation’s originality, expressed belief that Syrians will not accept extremist radicals as an alternative for the current regime. “Under their control, freedom would not get any better. This is the alternative prepared by the ongoing conspiracy against Syria.”
TRIBUNAL… VOID
To conclude, Lawyer Rashad Salameh attacked the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, and said he fully agreed with Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah in this context. He said that Sayyed Nasrallah’s vision reflected the truth, whether at the level of the investigation’s measures or the amendments to the internal rules of regulation.
Salameh said the tribunal was unconstitutional, and noted that the process has started at the moment in which the government of Prime Minister Fouad Saniora requested its creation under chapter seven. He pointed to the agreement that was signed between the United Nations and then Justice Minister Khaled Qabbani, which contradicted the constitution. “The Lebanese Republic cannot be the confined to the Justice Minister, as there’s a President who, according to the constitution, is the one eligible to sign external agreements. Add to this the fact that Saniora’s government was not constitutional.”
Salameh also pointed to the suspicious change of accusations according to the political developments. “At the beginning, Syria was the target, and the four officials were the victims. If an indictment was issued at the time, then the main suspect would have been Syria without doubt,” he stressed, adding that it has been proven that this tribunal violated all legal standards.
He also noted that Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah has offered solid evidence concerning an Israeli possible role in the assassination of former PM Rafiq Hariri, but that the tribunal chose to reject it. “Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare had declared that the evidence will not change the course of investigation even before receiving them,” he recalled.
“The US and Israel were the first to benefit from the crime. But they will never be among the suspects,” he stressed.
LONG AND EVIL AMERICAN SERIES…
In parallel, Salameh said that Lebanon should be ready for the sanctions some sides are seeking to impose against it. He noted, however, that such sanctions would include all Lebanon, and not a specific political party. He warned that such an option would undermine stability in the country and increase the horizontal division within the Lebanese.
Legally, Salameh also noted that Hariri’s murder was never among the crimes that should be explored by international tribunals. He noted that those concerned have sought to find the best definition of “terrorism” that could correspond to Hariri’s murder, and found it in a “silly” article in the Lebanese law. He noted that only in this law, there’s no reference to a crime against humanity, or annihilation.
According to Salameh, another violation of international law by this tribunal was the release of “various” indictments. “We believe that there’s only one indictment in all causes. With this cause, they’re promising us many. This is unpopular. We’re speaking of an indictment, not of an evil and boring American series.”
To end, Salameh stressed that whoever really wants the truth could not reach it through this tribunal and this investigation. He said that serious investigation must start by questioning the false witnesses who lied, misled the investigation, and hid the real culprit.
Homes, churches, schools, and crops all destroyed as the post-coup government continues to side with wealthy plantation owners over the country’s organized farmers. … detailed account
… And when you associate one thing with another over time, just the mention of the one brings the association of the other. What this will sometimes mean is that even when something is later exposed as a lie, if it was accepted as a truth for a long time, the exposure of it as a lie is not believed. It’s in one ear and out the other.– 1999 Testimony of Mr. William Shaap
There are certain people; more than a few. In fact, based on certain measurement criteria they may even be considered the majority. Well, at least they were in 2008, or they were mixed and included in a certain majority back then. Not all, but certain definitions of ‘blind faith’ apply to these people; to list a few: ease of belief, rash conviction, uncriticalness, unquestioning belief, wishful belief. To a certain extent the adjective ‘fanatic’ applies to these people- fanatic as in excessive enthusiasm for and intense devotion to a person, cause or an idea. In some ways these people can be described as biased and ignorant. Unquestionably and most definitely all of these certain people have been very audacious. They have been audacious in maintaining their ignorant, fanatic and blind faith placed not in a particular religion, cult or a cause, but in a conning man. And they’ve been ignorant and blinded enough to maintain this fanatical and blind faith despite all revelatory signs and facts marching before them day in and day out; for over three years.
When these certain people are presented with the truth, that is the real truth about the man they have been conned into blindly believing in, they automatically go into this deaf mode, a trance-like state, and cease to hear or see anything before them-around them; everywhere. In this frequently occurring state these certain people closely resemble the Whirling Dervishes; who engage in long and continuous ecstatic dancing and whirling trance-like rituals. Like these Whirling Dervishes, these certain blinded and deafened fanatics go into a self-induced trance of ignorance, and they remain there.
I am sure you know many of these certain people. At least you come into contact with them frequently. Let me give you a few hints and you’ll recognize them immediately:
Before the 2008 elections, when they were told about Obama’s track record as a Senator, prior to his presidential candidacy, such as how he played a key role in passing the outrageous wiretapping bill to grant lawsuit immunity to telecommunication companies involved in illegal domestic wiretapping, these certain people:
Shrugged it off. Completely disregarded it. They were in the middle of heated ecstasy and could not be bothered with nuances like that. They were high on hallucinogens marketed and administered to them under a recently popularized brand- Audacity of Hope.
During the early stages of his campaign, Obama promised that he would only take public funds to finance his election campaign. When he very quickly changed, opted out and abandoned public financing, this is how these certain people reacted:
They shrugged it off. They ignored it. A few of them actually defended it; in a fanatical way. Those few claimed, in a blinded way, ‘He has to do what he has to do to get into the position to implement his change, promises. So what? A man must do whatever a man must do! Good for him!’
As a presidential candidate, when Obama started receiving his top donations from those same financial institutions that brought down our country’s economy; from Goldman Sachs to JP Morgan, City Group, Morgan Stanley and beyond, these certain people:
They waved it off. They looked the other way. Some started spinning like whirling dervishes and went into self-induced trances to block the nasty smell and feeling. Others actually cheered and supported it, and said: ‘This is the reality on the ground. The ultimate goal is winning and getting the position to bring about needed audacious changes! Once Obama gets into the White house he will say to all those donors ‘screw you all’…I have that much faith in him!’
When, after securing his presidency, Obama immediately went about securing the nomination of top Wall Street culprits, those who have sided with banks against the public interest -we are talking about people such as Larry Summers, Mary Schapiro, Gary Gensler Timothy Geithner, Ben Bernanke, Rahm Emanuel and others, these certain people…
Some of them began to engage in more whirling and spent more time in their trances. Others defended their cult-man as a president new to the job and in the process of finding his way… that is, a way to bring about audacious changes.
Then, Obama elated Neoconservatives with his other top-tier appointees; from Dennis Ross to Robert Gates, Susan Rice, Tony Lake, Richard Holbrooke, General James Jones … and the list goes on and on. And, these certain people…
More of them engaged in frequent whirling and spending significant amounts of time in a blissful trance. Still, others were furiously defending their man although a bit more desperately. They even tried desperate and ignorant lines such as ‘What do you expect?! He has to first clean up the mess left to him by his predecessor, and it takes a few ally Neocons to know and deal with old Neocons…’
Then, Obama began expanding and more than doubled the Bush Administration’s wars under false pretenses based on false premises- from continuing the overt war in Afghanistan and starting an illegal war in Libya, to covert wars in Yemen and Somalia, and undefined drone offenses in Pakistan. Our certain people…
Even more of them got into the trance-inducing whirling, and boy they kept whirling. Others spent some of their time on whirling and in a trance, and at other times in a semi-lucid state irrationally yet fanatically qualifying Obama’s illegal acts of wars and violence as ‘so very different than Bush.’ They qualified some of his wars as ‘not wars but interventions,’ and others as ‘necessary and temporary, inherited from his predecessor, which must be dealt with…’
When Obama institutionalized and further expanded the Bush Administration’s illegal domestic wiretapping practices, taking them even further, by astoundingly granting the Executive Branch unlimited immunity for any kind of ‘illegal’ government surveillance, …
When Obama invoked baseless and unconstitutional executive secrecy to quash legal inquiries into secret illegalities more often than any predecessor, …
When Obama amassed the worst record in US history for persecuting, prosecuting and jailing government whistle-blowers and truth-tellers, …
When Obama started initiating secret assassination programs and publicly announced that he has given himself the power to include Americans on the list of people to be assassinated, and actually attempted to assassinate at least one…
At this point almost all these certain people are spending almost all their time whirling, spinning. They have gotten themselves willfully blinded and in a trance state, and are still holding on to their blind fanatical faith.
There are a few of us who were not blinded to the history and track record of the man who sold our nation a bunch of audacious lies and conning promises. There are some of us who quickly woke up and registered the fact that we were indeed conned royally. There are others among us who took a bit longer to get persuaded and accept reality. However, there are certain people who insist on remaining in a trance, who are still blinded by their faith, and who fanatically refuse to see the real truth. They are still engaged in the audacity of hoping hopeless hope. Let us audaciously hope that they are not the majority when the time comes again in 2012.
The Lone Assassin: A Fascist Superman Travels Faster than a Speeding Bullet Versus the Police Moving Slower than an Arthritic Turtle
“So let us fight together with Israel, with our Zionist brothers against all anti-Zionists against all cultural Marxists/Multiculturalists”.
Anders Behring Breivik’s Manifesto
“. . . two more cells exist in my organization”. . .
Ander Behring Breivik in police custody (Reuters 7/25/11)
Introduction:
The July 22, 2011, bombing of the office of the Norwegian Prime Minister, Labor Party Jen Stoltenberg, which killed 8 civilians, and the subsequent political assassination of 68 unarmed activists of the Labor Party Youth on Utoeya Island, just 20 minutes from Oslo, by militant neo-fascist Christian-Zionists, raises fundamental questions about the growing links between the legal Far-Right, the ‘mainstream media’, the Norwegian police, Israel and rightwing terrorism.
The Mass Media and the Rise of Rightwing Terrorism:
The leading English language newspapers, The New York Times (NYT), the Washington Post (WP), the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and the Financial Times (FT), as well as President Obama, blamed “Islamic extremists”, upon the first police reports of the killings, publishing a series of incendiary (and false) headlines and reports, labeling the event as ‘Norway’s 9-11’, in terms, which echoed the ideological motivation and justifications cited by the Norwegian Christian-Zionist political assassin, Anders Behring Breivik himself. The July 23/24 front page of the Financial Times (of London), read “Islamist extremism fears: Worst Europe strike since 2005”. Obama immediately cited the terrorist attack in Norway to further justify his overseas wars against Muslim countries. The FT, NYT, WP and WSJ trotted out their self-styled “experts” who debated over which Arab/Islamic leaders or movements were responsible – despite Norwegian press reports of ‘the arrest of a Nordic man in police uniform’.
Clearly, the US mass media and political elite were eager to use the bombing and assassinations to justify ongoing overseas imperial wars, ignoring the burgeoning domestic extremist rightwing organizations and violent individuals who are the outgrowth of official Islamophobic hate propaganda.
When Anders Breivik, a known neo-fascist extremist, handed his weapons over to Norwegian police without resistance and claimed credit for the bombing and massacre, the second phase of the official cover-up took place: He was immediately described as “a lone wolf assassin”, who “acted alone” (BBC July 24, 2011) or as mentally deranged, downplaying his political networks, his American, European and Israeli ideological mentors and commitments, which led to his acts of terrorism. Even more outrageous, the media and officials ignored the fact that this complex, multiphase terrorist attack was beyond the capacity of one ‘deranged’ person.
Anders Behring Breivik had been a dues-paying member of a Far-Right political party, The Progress Party and a collaborator and contributor to an overtly neo-Nazi web site. He frequently focused his hatred on the ruling Labor Party for its relative tolerance of immigrants. He despised immigrants especially, Muslims, and was an ardent Christian-Zionist supporter of Israeli repression and terror against the Palestinian people. His criminal action was political in essence and embedded in a much wider political network.
The political elite and media have scrambled to deny the overlapping links between ‘legal’ ideological Islamophobes, like the American Zionists Daniel Pipes, David Horowitz, Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, the Dutch far-right Party of Freedom led by the hate-monger Geert Wilders and their counterparts in the Norwegian Progress Party who rail against the “Muslim threat”. The “direct action” terrorists take their cues from electoral parties, like the Progress Party, who recruit and indoctrinate activists, like Behring Breivik, who then leave the ‘electoral road’ to carry out their bloody carnage, allowing the ‘respectable’ hate-mongers to hypocritically condemn him… after the outrage.
The Lone Assassin: A Fascist Superman Travels Faster than a Speeding Bullet Versus the Police Moving Slower than an Arthritic Turtle:
The case for the “lone wolf terrorist” defies credence. It is a tissue of lies used to cover up state complicity, intelligence malfeasance, and the sharp right-turn in the domestic and foreign policies of NATO countries.
There is no basis to accept Breivik’s initial claim that he acted alone for several outstanding reasons: First, the car bomb, which devastated downtown Oslo, was a highly complex weapon requiring expertise and coordination – the kind available to state or intelligence services, like the Mossad, which specialize in devastating car bombs. Amateurs, like Breivik, with no training in explosives, usually blow themselves up or lack the skill required to connect the electronic timing devices or remote detonators (like the unsuccessful ‘shoe’, ‘underpants’ and ‘Times Square’ bombers have proved). Secondly, the details of (a) moving the bomb, (b) obtaining (stealing) a vehicle, (c) placing the device at the strategic site, (d) successfully detonating it and (e) then gowning up in an elaborate special police uniform with an arsenal of hundreds of rounds of ammunition and driving off in another vehicle to Utoeya Island, (f) waiting patiently while armed to the teeth for a ferry boat, (g) crossing with other passengers in his police uniform, (h) rounding up the Labor youth activists and commencing the massacre of scores of unarmed youth and finally (i) finishing off the wounded and hunting for those trying to hide or swim away – is not the activity of a lone zealot. Even the combination of Superman, Einstein and a world class marksman could not perform those tasks.
The media and NATO leaders must view the public as passive morons to expect them to believe that Anders Behring Breivik “acted alone”. He is willing to take a 20 year prison sentence if it means, as he maintains, that their collective action is the spark that ignites his comrades and advances the agenda of the violent and legal far rightwing parties. Facing a Norwegian judge on July 25, he publically declared the existence of “two more cells in my organization”. According to witness testimony on Utoeya Island shots from two distinct weapons were heard from different directions during the massacre. The police say they are… “investigating”. Needless to say the police have found nothing; instead they put on a “show” to cover their inaction by raiding two houses far from the massacre and quickly released the suspects.
The most serious political implication of the terrorist action, however, is the conspicuous complicity of top police officials. The police took 90 minutes to arrive at Utoeya Island, located less than 20 kilometers from Oslo, 12 minutes by helicopter and 25 to 30 minutes by car and boat. The delay allowed the right wing assassins to use up the ammunition, maximizing the death toll of young, anti-fascist activists and devastating the Labor youth movement. The police chief, Sveinung Sponheim, made the feeblest excuse and cover-up, claiming “problems with transport”. Sponheim argued that a helicopter “wasn’t on standby” and they “could not find a boat” (Associated Press, July 24, 2011). Yet a helicopter was available; it managed to fly to Utoeya and film the ongoing slaughter, and over half of Norwegians, a seafaring people for millennia, own or have access to a boat. A police force, faced with what the Prime Minister calls the ‘worst atrocity since the Nazi occupation’, moving at the pace of an arthritic turtle to rescue youth activists, raises the suspicion of some level of complicity. The obvious question arises as to the degree to which the ideology of right wing extremism – neo-fascism – has penetrated the police and security forces, especially the upper echelons? This level of “inactivity” raises more questions than it answers. What it suggests is that the Social Democrats only control part of the Government – the legislative, while the neo-fascists influence the state apparatus.
The plain fact is that the police did not save a single life. When they finally arrived, Anders Behring Breivik had run out of ammunition and surrendered turning himself over to the police. The police literally did not fire a single shot; they did not even have to hunt or capture the assassin. An almost choreographed scenario: Hundreds wounded, 68 unarmed, peaceful activists killed and the Labor youth movement decimated.
The police can claim “crime solved” while the mass media prattles about a “lone assassin”. The far right has a “martyr” to mask a further advance in their anti-Muslim, pro-Israel crusade. (It is reminiscent of the celebrated Israeli-American fascist mass murderer, Dr. Baruch Goldstein, who slaughtered dozens of unarmed Palestinian men and boys at prayer in 1994).
Only two days before the political murders, the head of the Labor Party Youth Movement, Eskil Pederson, gave an interview to the Dagbladet, Norway’s second largest tabloid, in which he announced a “unilateral economic embargo of Israel from the Norwegian side” (Gilad Atzmon, July 24, 2011).
The fact of the matter is that the Norwegian military has no problem promptly dispatching 500 troops to Afghanistan, half way around the world and providing six Norwegian Air Force jets and pilots to bomb and terrorize Libya. And yet they can’t find a helicopter or a row boat to transport their police a couple hundred yards to stop a domestic right wing terrorist – whose murderous rampage was being described second by second by the terrorized young victims on their cell phones to their frantic parents?
The Imperial Roots of Domestic Fascism: Conclusion
Clearly, the decisions of Norway and other Scandinavian nations to participate in the US imperial crusades against Muslim and especially Arab people in the Middle East have aroused and energized the neo-fascist right. They now want to “bring the war home”; they want Norway to go further, to ‘cleanse the nation’ by expelling Muslims. They want to “send a message” to the Labor Party: Either it must accept a full neo-fascist pro-Israeli agenda or expect more massacres, more elected fascists, more followers of Anders Behring Breivik.
The “Progress Party” is now the second largest political party in Norway. If a “conservative” coalition defeats Labor, neo-fascists will probably sit in the Government. Who knows, after a few years of good behavior, they might find an excuse to commute their ex-comrades sentence . . . or proclaim him mentally rehabilitated and freed.
Clearly what is needed is the immediate withdrawal of all troops from imperial wars and a systematic, coherent and organized fight against domestic right-wing terrorists and their intellectual godparents, in America, Israel and Europe. Labor youth must go press on with their demand that the Labor Government, under Prime Minister Jen Stoltenberg, recognize the nation of Palestine and implement a total boycott of Israeli goods and services. A national and international political-educational campaign must be organized to expose the links between respectable electoral fascists and violent terrorists. The Labor Youth martyrs of Utoeya Island should be cherished and their ideals taught in all the schools. Their far-right enemies and supporters whether overt, covert or directly complicit, should be exposed and condemned. The best weapon against the renewed neo-fascist onslaught is a political and educational offensive, taking up the anti-fascist, anti-Quisling (Norway’s notorious Nazi collaborator) fighting traditions of their grandparents’ era. It’s not too late – if the Labor Party, the Norwegian trade unions and the anti-fascist youth act now before the flood of resurgent fascism.
“When it comes to the rights of Palestinians in Israel, there is no difference between opposition and coalition.” The AIC interviews MK Hanin Zoabi, who is concerned that racism has become part of Israeli national consensus, and everything outside of this must now be criminalized.
Since she was sanctioned for her participation in the first Freedom Flotilla to Gaza, Knesset Member Hanin Zoabi (National Democratic Assembly) spends most days inside her office in the Knesset. Her desk is overflowing with papers, the small coffee table on the side is occupied with used tea mugs and some treats; in one corner, facing her desk, a television is broadcasting live the debate on the Knesset floor.
As of Monday 18 July, MK Zoabi is unable to participate in Knesset general debates or even speak in parliamentary committees until the end of this year’s parliamentary sessions, at the end of July. “I can just vote”, explains the Palestinian politician, with a half smile of open resignation. Throughout the entire interview with the Alternative Information Center (AIC), Zoabi will not take her eyes off the screen for more than a minute; she doesn’t want to miss the chance to exercise her last remaining right as a democratic elected MK: expressing her minority vote.
– Do you think you can still promote change from within the Knesset?
Promote change…mmmm, yeah! (She laughs). Definitely. The event of the Flotilla proved how crucial our presence in the Knesset is. It is ironic. The fact that they restrict our movements and incite against us indicates that we are really challenging their policies. Because if you don’t challenge their policies, if you don’t make a difference, if our existence as the National Democratic Assembly was insignificant to them, they could simply marginalise us, let us do whatever we want. The fact that they are so racist against us, the fact that they are doing everything in order to incite against, is proof that we are bothering them; we are not making their life easy.
Zoabi refuses to yield to pessimism. It’s been more than a year since she gained global fame with her participation in the Freedom Flotilla on board the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish ship on which nine activists died and dozens were injured after it was attacked by an elite Israeli naval force. Since then Zoabi has become accustomed to the insults and aggressive comebacks of her fellow MKs, both from the right and the centre. As she said, “when it comes to the rights of Palestinians in Israel, there is no difference between opposition and coalition”. “When I could still participate in Knesset committees, every time I used to speak, someone would say ‘yeah, you are in the Flotilla so go to the Flotilla and go to Gaza’. I talked about kindergartens and about children and they would say ‘you can go to Gaza’. I spoke of the confiscation of lands and they would say ‘it is better to go to Gaza’, she recalled, laughing carelessly.
A month after the first Flotilla was attacked and their passengers detained and deported, MK Zoabi received the first sanction from her colleagues. She was stripped of three of her parliamentary privileges: her diplomatic passport, funds for any legal counseling and the right to visit countries with which Israel doesn’t have diplomatic relations. “It’s just hatred,” Zoabi explained. In this Knesset irrational racism exists. Maybe in the previous Knesset there was a more rational racism, a more sophisticated racism; but now it’s very basic, very direct”.
This “irrational racism” is part of the new ruling consensus in Israel, Zoabi continues. “A lot of people now think that Jewish values are more important than democratic values. This obsession with judaising everything…the children in schools have no idea what democracy means, or equality. When you obsessively teach them Zionist values, they will grow up with the conclusion that there are no Palestinians citizens here. It’s a psychological ethnic cleansing. They teach them to recognize the Palestinian as an enemy, but not to recognize him in daily life, as a citizen, as a partner in this home land,” warns Zoabi, losing her relaxed manner for a moment.
For Zoabi, the sole Palestinian woman in the Knesset, the main difference between the current government and the previous ones is not racism (“Israel has been a Jewish state since 1948, that is not something new””, but the criminalisation of everything outside of this consensus. The recently approved anti-boycott law is proof of that. “The settlements are part of Israel and that is not negotiable. This way of thinking is delegitimising politics as such, because now everything is part of a consensus and whatever is outside this consensus is criminalised. This is the dramatic effect of this government”, Zoabi asserts, before turning her eyes for a last time to the TV. The last speech is about to finish; she can finally take her seat on the floor of the Knesset and vote against the creation of an investigative committee on the funding sources of Israeli human rights organizations.
On February 13, 1960, France carried out its first nuclear test in Algeria’s southern Reggane region. According to official statistics, 17 nuclear tests were carried out in total over the next 6 years. The area remains affected, and local scientists say that radioactive contamination has caused genetic mutations and irreversibly changed the region.
There are no official statistics on the number of victims. The only figures can be found in the records kept by the French representative of the local church, which lists 42,000 victims of nuclear tests. Three years ago, the French Ministry of Defense issued a statement, putting the number at 27,000 people. The victims include French soldiers as well as local Algerians who lived in the surrounding areas. … continue
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The draft of a strategic deal between Washington and Kabul envisions giving the United States the authority to set up permanent military bases in Afghanistan.
Aletho News
