The Act of Killing
As a major new documentary about the Indonesian genocide goes on national release, an AHRC film looks at the research behind ‘The Act of Killing’
To mark the national release of the film ‘The Act of Killing’, the AHRC is today releasing a film of an interview with Professor Joram ten Brink of the University of Westminster, Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded Genre and Genocide research project, of which the new documentary is a major output.
‘The Act of Killing’ depicts a group of unrepentant former members of Indonesian death squads being challenged to re-enact some of their many murders in the style of the American movies they love. The film focuses particularly on one individual, Anwar Congo, whose initial enthusiasm for the re-enactments slowly gives way to outward expressions of unease and remorse.
When the government of Indonesia was overthrown by the military in 1965, Congo and his friends were promoted from small-time gangsters who sold movie theatre tickets on the black market to death squad leaders. They helped the army kill more than one million alleged communists, ethnic Chinese and intellectuals in less than a year. As the executioner for the most notorious death squad in his city, Congo himself killed hundreds of people with his own hands.
‘The Act of Killing’ is a journey into the memories and imaginations of the perpetrators, offering insight into the minds of mass killers. The film is a nightmarish vision of a frighteningly banal culture of impunity in which killers can joke about crimes against humanity on television chat shows, and celebrate moral disaster with the ease and grace of a soft shoe dance number.
The Act of Killing CLIP
The Act of Killing Director’s Cut — Clip 1
The Act of Killing Director’s Cut — Clip 2
The Act of Killing – final scene
Blasphemy in Secular France
The Shoah as State Religion?
By Diana Johnstone | CounterPunch | January 24, 2014
Paris – The campaign by the French government, mass media and influential organizations to silence the Franco-Cameroonese humorist Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala continues to expose a radical split in perception within the French population. The official “mobilization” against the standup comedian, first called for by Interior Minister Manuel Valls at a ruling Socialist Party gathering last summer, portrays the entertainer as a dangerous anti-Semitic rabble rouser, whose “quenelle”* gesture is interpreted as a “Nazi salute in reverse”.
For his fans and supporters, those accusations are false and absurd.
The most significant result of the Dieudonné uproar so far is probably the dawning realization, among more and more people, that the “Shoah”, or Holocaust, functions as the semi-official State Religion of France.
On RTL television last January 10, the well-known nonconformist commentator Eric Zemmour (who happens to be Jewish) observed that it was “grotesque and ridiculous” to associate Dieudonné with the Third Reich. Zemmour described Dieudonné as a product of the French left’s multiculturalism. “It’s the left that has taught us since May ’68 that it is prohibited to prohibit, that we must shock the bourgeois. It is the left that has turned the Shoah into the supreme religion of the Republic…”
Zemmour suggested that Dieudonné was provoking “the respectable left-wing bourgeoisie” and that he “reproaches Jews for wanting to conserve the monopoly of suffering and steal primacy in suffering from descendants of slavery”.
There is more than that at stake. Reminders of the Shoah serve indirectly to justify France’s increasingly pro-Israel foreign policy in the Middle East. Dieudonné opposed the war against Libya enough to go there to show his solidarity with the country being bombed by NATO.
Dieudonné began his career as a militant anti-racist. Instead of apologizing for his 2003 sketch mocking an “extreme Zionist settler”, Dieudonné retorted by gradually extending his sphere of humor to cover the Shoah. The campaign against him can be seen as an effort to restore the sacred character of the Shoah by enforcing repression of a contemporary form of blasphemy.
To confirm this impression, on January 9 an “historic” agreement was reached between the Paris Prosecutor’s Office and the French Shoah Memorial that any teenager found guilty of anti-Semitism may be sentenced to undergo a course of “sensitivity to the extermination of the Jews”. Studying genocide is supposed to teach them “republican values of tolerance and respect for others”.
This is perhaps exactly what they don’t need. The Prosecutor’s Office may be unaware of all the young people who are saying that they have had too much, rather than not enough, Shoah education.
An atypical article in Le Monde of January 8 cited opinions anyone can easily hear from French youth, but which are usually ignored. After interviewing ten left-leaning, middle class spectators who denied any anti-Semitism, Soren Seelow quoted Nico, a 22-year-old left-voting law student at the Sorbonne, who adores Dieudonné for “liberating” laughter in what he considers a stuffy conformist society of “good thoughts”. As for the Shoah, Nico complained that “they’ve been telling us about it since elementary school. When I was 12, I saw a film with bulldozers pushing bodies into ditches. We are subjected to a guilt-inducing morality from the earliest age.”
In addition to history courses, teachers organize commemorations of the Shoah and trips to Auschwitz. Media reminders of the Shoah are almost daily. Unique in French history, the so-called Gayssot law provides that any statement denying or minimizing the Shoah can be prosecuted and even lead to prison.
Scores of messages received from French citizens in response to my earlier article as well as private conversations make it clear to me that reminders of the Shoah are widely experienced by people born decades after the defeat of Nazism as invitations to feel guilty or at least uncomfortable for crimes they did not commit. Like many demands for solemnity, the Shoah can be felt as a subject that imposes uneasy silence. Laughter is then felt as liberation.
But for others, such laughter can only be an abomination.
Dieudonné has been fined 8,000 euros for his song “Shoananas”, and further such condemnations are in the offing. Such lawsuits, brought primarily by LICRA (Ligue internationale contre le racisme et l’antisémitisme), also aim to wipe him out financially.
“Hatred”
One line in the chorus against Dieudonné is that he is “no longer a comedian” but has turned his shows into “anti-Semitic political meetings” which spread “hatred”. Even the distant New Yorker magazine has accused the humorist of making a career out of peddling “hatred”. This raises images of terrible things happening that are totally remote from a Dieudonné show or its consequences.
There was no atmosphere of hatred among the thousands of fans left holding their tickets when Dieudonné’s January 9 show in Nantes was banned at the last minute by France’s highest administrative authority, the Conseil d’Etat. Nobody was complaining of being deprived of a “Nazi rally”. Nobody thought of causing harm to anyone. All said they had come to enjoy the show. They represented a normal cross-section of French youth, largely well-educated middle class. The show was banned on the grounds of “immaterial disturbance of public order”. The disappointed crowd dispersed peacefully. Dieudonné’s shows have never led to any public disorder.
But there is no mistaking the virulent hatred against Dieudonné.
Philippe Tesson, a prominent editor, announced during a recent radio interview that he would “profoundly rejoice” at seeing Dieudonné executed by a firing squad. “He is a filthy beast, so get rid of him!” he exclaimed.
The internet Rabbi Rav Haim Dynovisz, in the course of a theology lesson, acknowledged that Darwin’s theory of evolution, which he rejects, had been proved by Dieudonné to apply to “certain” people, who must have descended from gorillas.
Two 17-year-olds have been permanently expelled from their high school for having made the quenelle gesture, on grounds of “crimes against humanity”. The Franco-Israeli web magazine JSSNews is busily investigating the identities of persons making the quenelle sign in order to try to get them fired from their jobs, boasting that it will “add to unemployment in France”.
The owners of the small Paris theater, “La Main d’Or”, rented by Dieudonné on a lease running until 2019, recently rushed back from Israel expressing their intention to use a technicality to end his lease and throw him out.
The worst thing Dieudonné has ever said during his performances, so far as I am aware, was a personal insult against the radio announcer Patrick Cohen. Cohen has insistently urged that persons he calls “sick brains” such as Dieudonné or Tariq Ramadan be banned from television appearances. In late December, French television (which otherwise has kept Dieudonné off the airwaves) recorded Dieudonné saying that “when I hear Patrick Cohen talking, I think to myself, you know, the gas chambers… Too bad…”
With the anti-Dieudonné campaign already well underway, this offensive comment was seized upon as if it were typical of Dieudonné’s shows. It was an excessively crude reaction by Dieudonné to virulent personal attacks against himself.
Irreverence is a staple for standup comics, like it or not. And Dieudonné’s references to the Holocaust, or Shoah, all fall into the category of irreverence.
On matters other than the Shoah, there is no shortage of irreverence in France.
Traditional religions, as well as prominent individuals, are regularly caricatured in a manner so scatological as to make the quenelle look prudish. In October, 2011, Paris police intervened against traditional Catholics who sought to interrupt a play which included (the apparent) pouring of excrement over the face of Jesus. The political-media establishment vigorously defended the play, unconcerned that it was perceived by some people as “offensive”.
Recently, France gave a big welcome to the Ukrainian group calling itself “Femen”, young women who seem to have studied Gene Sharp’s doctrines of provocation, and use their bare breasts as (ambiguous) statements. These women were rapidly granted residence papers (so hard to get for many immigrant workers) and allowed to set up shop in the midst of the main Muslim neighborhood in Paris, where they immediately attempted to try (unsuccessfully) to provoke the incredulous residents. The blonde Femen leader was even chosen to portray the symbol of the Republic, Marianne, on the current French postage stamp, although she does not speak French.
Last December 20, these “new feminists” invaded the Church of the Madeleine near the Elysée Palace in Paris, acted out “the abortion of Jesus” and then pissed on the high altar. There were no cries of indignation from the French government. The Catholic Church is complaining, but such complaints have a feeble echo in France today.
Why the Shoah Must Be Sacred
When Dieudonné sings lightly of the Shoah, he is believed by some to be denying the Holocaust and calling for its repetition (a contradictory proposition, upon reflection). The sacred nature of the Shoah is defended by the argument that keeping alive the memory of the Holocaust is essential to prevent it from “happening again”. By suggesting the possibility of repetition, it keeps fear alive.
This argument is generally accepted as a sort of law of nature. We must keep commemorating genocide to prevent it from happening again. But is there really any evidence to support this argument?
Nothing proves that repeated reminders of an immense historic event that happened in the past prevent it from happening again. History doesn’t work that way. As for the Shoah, gas chambers and all, it is quite preposterous to imagine that it could happen again considering all the factors that made it happen in the first place. Hitler had a project to confirm the role of Germans as the master “Aryan” race in Europe, and hated the Jews as a dangerous rival elite. Who now has such a project? Certainly not a Franco-African humorist! Hitler is not coming back, nor is Napoleon Bonaparte, nor is Attila the Hun.
Constantly recalling the Shoah, in articles, movies, news items, as well as at school, far from preventing anything, can create a morbid fascination with “identities”. It fosters “victim rivalries”. This fascination can lead to unanticipated results. Some 330 schools in Paris bear plaques commemorating the Jewish children who were deported to Nazi concentration camps. How do little Jewish children today react to that? Do they find it reassuring?
This may be useful to the State of Israel, which is currently undertaking a three-year program to encourage more of France’s 600,000 Jews to leave France and go to Israel. In 2013, the number of Aliyah from France rose to more than 3,000, a trend attributed by the European Jewish Press to the “French Jewish community’s increasingly Zionistic mentality, particularly among young French Jews, and a manifestation of efforts by the Jewish Agency, the Israel government, and other non-profits to cultivate Jewish identity in France.”
“If this year we have seen Aliyah from France go from under 2,000 to more than 3,000, I look forward to seeing that number grow to 6,000 and beyond in the near future, as we connect ever more young people to Jewish life and to Israel,” declared Natan Sharansky, Chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency for Israel. Surely, one way to encourage Aliyah is to scare Jews with the threat of anti-Semitism, and claiming that Dieudonné’s numerous fans are Nazis in disguise is a good way to do this.
But as for Jews who want to live in France, is it really healthy to keep reminding Jewish children that, if they are not wary, their fellow citizens might one day want to herd them onto freight trains and ship them all to Auschwitz? I have heard people saying privately that this permanent reminder is close to child abuse.
Someone who thinks that way is Jonathan Moadab, a 25-year-old independent journalist who was interviewed by Soren Seelow. Moadab is both anti-Zionist and a practicing Jew. As a child he was taken to tour Auschwitz. He told Seelow that that living with that “victim indoctrination” had engendered a sort of “pre-traumatic stress syndrome”.
“Dieudonné’s jokes about the Shoah, like his song Shoananas, are not aimed at the Shoah itself,” he says, “but at the exploitation of the Holocaust described by the American political writer Norman Finkelstein.”
On January 22, on his web site Agence Info Libre, Jonathan Moadab openly called for “separating the State from the Holocaust religion”. Moadab cites professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz as the first to point out the many ways in which the Holocaust has become the new Jewish religion. If that is so, everyone has the right to practice the religion of the Shoah. But should it be the official religion of France?
French politicians never cease celebrating the “laicité”, the secularism, of the French Republic. Interior Minister Manuel Valls, who proclaims his own devotion to Israel, because his wife is Jewish, recently called the Shoah the “sanctuary that cannot be profaned”. Moadab concludes that if the Shoah is a sanctuary, then the Holocaust is a religion, and the Republic is not secular.
Changes are taking place in the attitude of young people in France. This change is not due to Dieudonné. It is due to the passage of time. The Holocaust became the religion of the West at a time when the generation after World War II was in the mood to blame their parents. Now we are with the grandchildren, or great-grandchildren, of those who lived through that period, and they want to look ahead. No law can stop this.
*As described in my earlier article, the “quenelle” is a vulgar gesture roughly meaning “up yours”, with one hand placed at the top of the other arm stretched down to signify “how far up” this is to be. Using the name of a French dumpling, Dieudonné started using this gesture in a wholly different context years ago, as an expression of defiance, incredulity or indifference.
Diana Johnstone can be reached at diana.johnstone@wanadoo.fr
Dieudonné interviewé par Sky News – Complet-
January 23, 2014
Related article
Israeli gunfire blocks sowing of Palestinian farmland in Gaza
Resistenza Quotidiana | January 22, 2014
Gaza, Occupied Palestine – Since the Zionist occupation forces’ bulldozers had destroyed part of Khaled Qudaih’s field in Khuza’a, east of Khan Younis, he and his family went out to sow it again. The military responded with about half an hour of gunfire, threatening to strike Qudaih directly if he had not moved away.
Qudaih had sown wheat a little less than a month ago. It was growing, it was green and in May would be ripe. On 19th January, he went to his lands with his family to spray fertilizer. Samiha, his twelve year old daughter, wanted to get closer to the separation barrier, but she knew that it was forbidden: mamnua in Arabic.
She came as close as she could, until she reached foreign activists with yellow jackets. She approached and, with the voice of a twelve-year-old child, with the slightly clumsy behavior of those approaching foreigners for the first time, explained that the land is forbidden to her.
“I am forbidden to approach the barrier more than this,” she said. “Over there, there are the Israelis and they shoot. That land is prohibited (mamnua). It is my family’s land and is prohibited. Sometimes the Israelis shoot even when we are away from the barrier, but today it is quiet. Will you come back when we will harvest? For the harvesting, the whole family will come. There will also be my grandfather, uncles … a few days ago the bulldozers came and destroyed this plot of land that we had sown. Now it is destroyed.”
It gives a certain feeling to hear that horrible word mamnua from a young girl referring to her family’s land, “prohibited.”
In any case, on the 19th, fertilizer was sprayed fertilizer and there was no Zionist aggression.
Qudaih, however, was not entirely satisfied.
There was the land he had planted at the edge of the field, beside the barrier, which had been destroyed by occupation bulldozers. Even that was his land. The Zionists had no right to prevent him from cultivating it, to prevent him from reaping its benefits. He would be back the next day to reclaim it. That land could not be mamnua, “forbidden,” because it was his land, because he had also sown there, because the grain was used to make bread for his family, because the stems and bran are used to feed the sheep in his backyard , and they produce milk to drink and wool for warmth. No, not even the extreme limit of his land, 50 meters from the barrier, could be mamnua land.
So Qudaih promised that the next day he would return. He would come back with hoes to clear the ground , and with the donkey and plow for after sowing. If it was not under Zionist threat he would do it all with the tractor. But not here. This area is too close to the separation barrier. The Zionists would not let him use a tractor.
Qudaih’s case is not an isolated one. Indeed, one can almost say that he is lucky, because usually, it is impossible to approach the less than 300 meters from the separation barrier. This is not only to attack the freedom of movement of Palestinians in their own land, but also their right to work, and , even worse, their food self-sufficiency. The Gaza Strip’s population density is among the highest in the world and, with its demographic explosion in progress, the enclave is becoming increasingly dependent on external aid, unable to meet its own needs.
Qudaih reaches his land with his wife, his wife’s sister, and three of his sons. Wael, no older than ten years, is also among them. Some foreign activists accompany them. A donkey cart carries the seeds, hoes and plow; Qudaih leaves the cart at the edge of the field, farthest from the barrier, and carries everything by hand. The Zionists cannot claim they could not see what was on the cart, and nothing, neither the donkey nor the material it brought could pose a threat to Israel’s security or the safety of the soldiers of the occupation forces.
Qudaih and his sons aggressively work the ground with hoes. After about ten minutes a Jeep arrives. A few seconds after it stops, the Zionists shoot a few rounds of gunfire, without any warning, without any provocation toward them. Qudaih and his sons, including Wael, are not intimidated and continue to work. Their land cannot be mamnua just because a racist and unjust occupation force has decided so. Who is stronger, the occupation forces with all their weapons and armor, or these farmers armed with hoes? The older children continue to pave the way. Khaled holds the plow in the right position while Wael drives the donkey. It takes a long time to plow the land with the donkey, because it cannot pull a heavy plow, only a small plow, which must go back and forth several times.
While the farmers continue to work, several Jeeps pass on the other side of the barrier. They continue to shoot every now and then, just to remind that they are not gone, and that the land is mamnua. But Qudaih and his family do not move away until a soldier exits a Jeep. He remains a few minutes hidden behind a mound of earth, created to hide the occupation forces, and then comes out shouting, in Arabic with a strong Hebrew accent, that they have to leave otherwise he will shoot to hit them.
While it is nice to think that the presence of internationals helped ensure the soldier got the first shot in the air, and that it has discouraged them from directly targeting Qudaih, on the other hand, it is frustrating to realize that if this happens it is only because the world is fundamentally racist, and a witness from the West is more inconvenient than a Palestinian witness.
Meanwhile, the soldier continues to shoot. Not only single shots, but also bursts of gunfire. At first Qudaih continues to plow the land. Then he must desist: He has a family, he can not afford to get hurt, he needs be able to continue working. Then, half an hour after the first rounds of gunfire, all of us return to where the donkey had been left, with the cart, in safer territory. A few grains of wheat remain on a spot that Qudaih has not been able to plow, in a Palestinian land where a violent occupying force said mamnua.
Related articles
Another Terrorist Blast Rocks Dahiyeh’s Haret Hreik
PressTV Videos · January 21, 2014
Two car bombs have gone off in a southern neighborhood of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, killing several people.
The explosions on Tuesday hit the Haret Hriek neighborhood in southern Beirut, which is considered as a stronghold of Lebanon’s resistance movement Hezbollah.
Reports say that at least four people have been killed and another 46 have been injured.
The al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra front has claimed responsibility on its twitter page for the bombings.
Hezbollah’s al-Manar television channel said the bombings hit a busy commercial street.
The neighborhood was also targeted by a deadly car bombing on January 2.
Geneva II talks on Syria not aimed at regime change: Russia
PressTV Videos | January 21, 2014
As the Geneva Two conference on Syria is drawing closer, the gap is widening among participants.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says that based on the Russian-US initiative, the conference is NOT aimed at bringing about regime change in Syria, but it seeks to launch an inter-Syrian dialog. The US, however, is pushing ahead with its own interpretation, saying that the Syrian government should give up power. Meanwhile, tensions are running high among Syrian opposition groups. After the UN excluded the main regional player, Iran, from the talks, the Syrian National Coalition confirmed that it will take part in the conference. But the largest bloc within the coalition has boycotted the negotiations. Meanwhile, Lavrov has described the one-day event as largely ceremonial, raising doubts about any tangible results.
Related article
Palestine Under Siege
By Richard Hugus
A video documentary of the destruction caused by the April 2002 Israeli attack on Jenin refugee camp in Palestine. Filmed three months after the attack. Also visits Jerusalem and Gaza. 41 minutes.
Winner of 2006 award from Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition worldwide film contest at Al-Awda’s Third Annual International Convention in Los Angeles
Full screen view recommended.
Related article
Israeli nukes aimed at terrorizing world: Ralph Schoenman
Press TV interview with Ralph Schoenman | January 19, 2014
Press TV has conducted an interview with Ralph Schoenman, author of Hidden History of Zionism, from Berkeley, California, to discuss Israel’s use of nuclear bombs to terrorize and dominate populations with the help of the United States.
What follows is a rough transcript of the interview.
Press TV: First of all, with this report in, will there be any political or legal implications for those who assisted Israel in acquiring these nuclear weapons?
Schoenman: The question is really going to the relationship of imperialism to the Zionist [entity] from its inception, in specific terms now the issue of the use of nuclear weapons.
There is a book,The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa, by Sasha Polakow-Suransky, which details the joint development of nuclear weapons by including neutron bombs by Israel and South Africa, and their testing.
The well-known figure Mordechai Vanunu – who was kidnapped by the Israelis when he disclosed the evidence of the Israeli preparations for nuclear capacity and testing of weapons, indeed, with the full panoply of evidence pertaining to this – was kidnapped, taken to Israel and held in incommunicado for 18 years.
There is a very sorted and menacing history of the use of these weapons to menace peoples across the world. I want to give a specific example in illumination of this, namely ‘View of the Cameroon Disaster…’, which Dan Fisher wrote about in the Los Angeles Times on August 27, 1986.
Death occurred in which people were found frozen in place as if they have been killed by gas. This was an event in 1986 in Cameroon – it was immediately described as an event in which the Israelis were involved. The Israeli infantry troops were soon to be on the scene. In fact, Shimon Perez, who was the former Foreign Minister and Prime Minister of Israel, was quickly on the scene with a team.
Indeed, the evidence about this was documented by Dan Fisher in the Los Angeles Times, as I’ve mentioned, but also there was a detailed account by the Cameroonian journalists which specified the role of the Israelis and the evidence of a neutron weapon: ‘The Lake Nyos Disaster 20 Years After: Revisiting Israeli Connection’, by Dibussi Tande.
My wife and I had a role in this expose because after the time we flew to the big island of Hawaii where leading volcanologist in the island of Hawaii was involved in the report on what occurred in Cameroon, he confirmed that the claims that this was the result of gases emerging from a lake with presumptive latent volcano that emitted gases in Lake Nyos, those gases then reached the atmosphere in causing thousands of people to die in their tracks frozen, while no damage to property occurred, was quickly exposed as a myth.
In fact, what we’re dealing with here is a neutron weapon. One of the people who’s most associated with the neutron bomb, Sam Cohen, who was working with the RAND Corporation in the United States, has detailed the neutron weapon.
There is no question whatsoever, given what Vanunu has exposed, given what evidence there is in Cameroon, that neutron weapons have been used and tested by the Israelis with the approval and collusion of the United States and the imperial powers notably France.
This is not a new development. The story is important. It is the culmination of a series of documentations, revelations over a period of 20, 30 and 40 years. These are crimes against humanity.
These are ongoing threats to the peoples of the world. They define the relationship of Israel and the Zionist [entity] to imperialism and the utilization of the nuclear capacity and of neutron bombs and weapons of this nature to terrorize the populations they seek to dominate, whose sovereignty they wish to destroy.
Related article
REMEMBER Sabra & Shatila ~ Roots of Blood!
Sabra and Shatila are two Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut, Lebanon where nearly two thousand Palestinian refugees were massacred during three days from September 16 to September 18, 1982. The massacre was carried out by hundreds of Christian Lebanese Phalangists with the aid of Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) surrounding the camp.
This was only possible because of the tacit approval and complicity of Israeli Defence Minister, butcher Ariel Sharon and his gang of zionist war criminals.
__________________
“Thou shalt not be a Victim.
Thou shalt not be a Perpetrator.
Above all, thou shalt not be a Bystander” ~ Yahuda Bauer,
Inscription at the Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC
__________________
“Remember the solidarity shown to Palestine here and everywhere … and remember also that there is a cause to which many people have committed themselves, difficulties and terrible obstacles notwithstanding.
Why?
Because it is a just cause, a noble ideal, a moral quest for equality and human rights.” ~ Edward Said
___________________
*FURTHER READING:
| Lest we forget:
http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_1967…
| The Legacy of Ariel Sharon, by Robert Fisk
The Independent, February 6, 2001
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fis…
| The Massacre at the Sabra and Shatila Camps: http://www.soundofegypt.com/palestini…
Related article
Glenn Greenwald Gets It Wrong
Jonathan Pollard Is No Victim
By Philip Giraldi • The Unz Review • January 10, 2014
In many predominantly progressive and libertarian circles journalist Glenn Greenwald is regularly praised and even called a hero for his courageous and unflinching criticism of the developing national security state and for his custodianship of what might be described as the Snowden papers. Through the years I too have generally found his insights both informative and refreshing and, while I have believed Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning’s theft of huge masses of classified information to be a considerable overreach, I do think that after twelve years of government autarky it is now time for the White House to come clean on what it has been doing to its own citizenry, something that would not be taking place without the intelligence leaks.
But all of that conceded, I often find that people on the left of the political equation are frequently trapped by the terms of their own orthodoxy which is every bit as conducive to tunnel vision as would be a tea party pronouncement made by a Sarah Palin or Ted Cruz. Greenwald is now calling for the release from prison of convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, who is serving a life sentence in a federal prison in North Carolina and he is appearing on the Israeli media to make his case.
Greenwald’s logic goes something like this: as the Snowden papers demonstrate that the United States has been spying on Israel Washington has no right to judge others engaged in the same behavior and is therefore hypocritical when it continues to hold an Israeli spy engaging in espionage against the United States. He states that Snowden and Pollard are connected, “When the US government goes around the world criticizing other countries for spying on allies and prosecuting them, are they going to maintain that with a straight face when they’re doing exactly that?” Greenwald calls the double standard governmental hypocrisy and insists that no country has the right to tell other countries not to do something that it itself is secretly engaging in. He rejects the argument that the NSA spying has been carried out to protect against terrorism and asks rhetorically if the US, revealed to be spying on Israeli officials, really believes that “democratically elected” Israelis are involved in terror?
Greenwald goes on in his interview with Israeli television Channel 10 to assert that the leak of the Snowden documents has “defended the values of American democracy.”
I, perhaps not surprisingly, see the issue differently. There is a certain amount of smugness and self -justification in what Greenwald is trying to sell about Snowden (and Pollard). Does he claim that stealing great masses of documents is intrinsically a defense of democracy or is he only referring to those documents that reveal illegal or unconstitutional behavior that should be halted and condemned? If stopping illegal activity by the United States government is his actual objective why is he releasing documents on spying on foreign officials, an action that is neither illegal in the US nor unconstitutional? Or is he designating himself as arbiter of acceptable behavior for the entire world? So I am not quite sure what to make of his logic and fail to understand what exactly he is condemning. Nor is it clear to me if there are any limits to what he might reveal.
I believe that spying is essential for every country that needs information relating to its legitimate foreign interests that is not available through public records or open sources. I at the same time concede that United States intelligence post 9/11 has become an out-of-control monster pursuing its own agendas and believe espionage should only be employed when it is a last option and only in a situation where a vital interest is at stake, limitations that have not been much in evidence over the past twelve years.
One can believe that the government’s spying on its own people in a fashion that is arguably both illegal and unconstitutional should be subject to the scrutiny that it is now receiving and should be stopped immediately, but spying on foreign countries is another issue altogether as is the spying carried out by other nations directed against the United States. Every nation in the world that engages in espionage, which means nearly all nations, denies that it is engaging in such activity and is certainly hypocritical in its professed attitudes towards spying, as Greenwald notes, but that does not mean that spies cannot do serious damage and should not be arrested and punished as a consequence. The Greenwald line of argument does not recognize that distinction and his comments suggest that all spying is wrong and indefensible so therefore those involved in it at any level or in any place should be judged by the same standard.
Sometimes spying is the only option for learning about foreign government activity that might do genuine damage to one’s country. And Greenwald should know better than to ask whether the “democratically elected” officials in Israel are carrying out terrorism. Of course they are, and all he has to do is refer to the murder of nine unarmed Turks on the ‘Mavi Marmara’ in 2010, the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in 2010 and the assassinations of Iranian scientists over the past three years.
Might it be in the interest of Washington to know exactly what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is up to, particularly as he described 9/11 as “good for Israel” while much of the world will blame any outrage carried out by Israel on the United States particularly as the Israelis have frequently used foreign passports to carry out their assassinations? And would it be a good idea for the United States to have prior knowledge if Israel were about to bomb Iran to get American ships in the Persian Gulf out of the way if for no other reason? And Greenwald might also consider the proportionality issue relative to the espionage that goes on between Israel and the US. It is largely a one way street with Israel doing most of the spying. Among nations friendly to the United States Israel is the most aggressive in its espionage activity, largely because it knows it can get away with it given the Justice Department’s all too convenient unwillingness to prosecute Israelis.
Greenwald also does not appear to appreciate the damage that Pollard did. Pollard was undoubtedly motivated to help Israel because he was Jewish but he also tried to sell information to several other countries and might even have been involved in trying to set up arms deals that could have placed sophisticated weapons in the hands of terrorists. Ultimately, he spied for Tel Aviv because he was paid for his services. He violated his oath to protect the information he had access to and gave the Israelis an entire room full of highly classified information. Some of that intelligence wound up in the Soviet Union in exchange for increased Jewish emigration. Greenwald might recall that the Soviets were (and still are) fully capable of destroying the United States in a nuclear exchange, so the provision of information that revealed US technical intelligence capabilities was potentially a serious matter. It has also been alleged that American intelligence sources were executed as a result of the information obtained in Moscow from Pollard by way of Israel.
It is not clear to me where Greenwald is likely to go next but employing logic similar to that which he uses with Pollard he might well conclude that because the US criminal justice system is flawed and sometimes convicts people who are innocent all people who have been judged guilty and sent to prison should be set free. The suggestion is appropriate applied to Pollard as he is, apart from anything else, a criminal. He stole something that did not belong to him and sold it. He betrayed his country. To claim that government hypocrisy is good grounds for freeing him is ludicrous.
Related article
BBC News Night on Dieudonné & The Quenelle
Gilad Atzmon:
If the quenelle is loosely defined as an anti establishment salute, one may wonder why Jews are offended by it and regard it as an ‘anti-Semitic’ gesture? Is it because many Jews actually identify with ‘the establishment’? And how do we explain the fact that the French government is happy to compromise the most elementary liberties just to appease the French Jewish Lobby (Crif)?
The truth is devastating – Palestine is here and the French people are the Palestinians Du Jour…
The French Palestinian Solidarity Deserves a Quenelle
Ariadna Theokopoulos | Bold Face News
France is the middle of a sweeping popular movement sparked by Dieudonné and symbolized by la Quennelle, a movement that has united young and old, white and black, men and women, the middle class and the unemployed, extreme Left, center and Right, many Muslims, Christians and even a couple of Jews.
It is an anti-establishment revolt but also one specifically directed at the Jewish power that rules the French establishment and has destroyed individual freedoms long cherished by the French, like freedom of speech. The French appear to have had enough of forced indoctrination into the worship of the Holocaust (a topic Dieudonné has dared to ridicule in his comedy sketches), of laws throwing historians in prison for daring to question the official Holocaust narrative, of the foreign policy of France being conducted according to the dictates of CRIF (the French equivalent of AIPAC).
It is a peaceful revolt, employing a gesture, not words, in a state muzzled by anti-free speech laws, one that mocks Power and says, “We are no longer afraid of you.” It is precisely that message that has sent the French Israeli Firsters into a hysterical panic: that “they” are no longer afraid and that a single spark was sufficient to unite all segments of society that JP had worked for so long to atomize and set against each other.
The measure of their panic is given by the preposterous, Orwellian ways in which they propose to silence and punish Dieudonné. The French Interior Minister, Mon. Valls (the same one who declared that through his wife he is eternally tied to Israel) has instructed (he prefers the word “advised”) the mayors of all French towns to forbid any performances of Dieudonné anywhere, in any venue. “You will never work in this country again!” Another contemplated measure is to form a joint commission of no less than three ministeries: Interior, Justice and Economy, to find modalities of punishing Dieudonné in all possible ways: depriving him of liberty, ruining him finnacially. He already owes close to 100,00 Euros in fines for offending speech.
Now in the middle of all this popular revolt, a progressive voice that despite its French accent sounds so very familiar, speaks out… against Dieudonné! It is Jean-Claude LeFort, President of the Association France Palestine Solidarité (AFPS):
“Pour quiconque suit objectivement les faits, les gestes et les propos de Dieudonné, la chose ne peut prêter à aucun doute possible : son antisémitisme est patent. Il n’est pas acceptable. Le racisme, redisons-le avec force, n’est pas une opinion mais un délit. Nous le condamnons par principe, absolu et non discutable, mais aussi par nécessité politique : il nuit terriblement à la cause du peuple palestinien dont Dieudonné fait mine de se réclamer.
Ses propos ont été condamnés par la justice à de nombreuses reprises. Et la loi doit s’appliquer sans la moindre mansuétude.”
French is a beautiful language but abject groveling sounds as foul as it does in English.
In free translation, with emphasis added:
“To those who follow events objectively, the gestures and statements of Dieudonné leave no doubt: they are patently anti-semitic. It is unacceptable. Racism, let is restate it strongly, is not an opinion but a felony. We condemn it by principle, absolute and undebatable, but also by political necessity: it harms terribly the cause of the Palestinian people which Dieudonné claims to support.”
His statements have been condemned by judicial authorities many times. And the law must be applied in full force.”
Not making the “fight against anti-semitism” a priority of the Palestinian solidarity, I am sure, would “harm terribly the cause” of AFPS’ funding. Who’s your daddy, Jean-Claude?
AFPS, like their English-speaking brethren, “give no quarter” to “anti-semites,” and they support punishing them “sans la moindre mansuétude!”
AFPS, this quennelle is for you:
Dieudonné répond à Yann Barthès
Related article
How Much Money Do The Rothschilds Have?
Bilzerian Report / March 16, 2012
For more than 200 years the Rothschild family has kept their banks in family hands, out of the general view of the public, in an effort to conceal their vast wealth. The Rothschilds have taken advantage of tax-free jurisdictions and have purposefully established their banks in countries with strict banking secrecy laws like Monaco, Luxembourg, and Switzerland.
The Rothschild dynasty first began to acquire prominence around the mid 1700′s. The first major patriarch of the family, Mayar Amschel Rothschild, sent his 5 sons to strategic banking centers throughout Europe. Nathan Rothschild went to London, Jabob to Paris, Salomon to Vienna, Asmchel (Jr.) to Frankfurt, and Calmann Rothschild to Naples.
From 1813-1815 Nathan Rothschild almost single handedly financed the British war effort while his brothers financed the French war effort. In one year of the war, 1815, Nathan Rothschild provided the British government with nearly 10 million pounds, which is equivalent to 6.5 billion pounds today.
Since the Rothschilds were playing both sides of the warring parties, they were the only ones who could get through both sides of the blockades quickly. Their network of banks provided news of major battles to Nathan Rothschild in London before even the British government received it. The Rothschilds traded on this inside information on the London stock exchange, making vast fortunes in the process. After the final battle of Waterloo, Nathan Rothschild received news that the British were victorious and promptly started to sell British government treasuries. The market knew by this point that Nathan was getting information before anyone one else and therefore assumed the British had lost the battle and started selling their British government bonds. Once the price had crashed, Nathan used his agents to secretly buy up nearly the entirety of the British government debt. Using large amounts of leverage, Nathan Rothschild made many multiples of his money on this one trade.
After the war, Nathan Rothschild bragged of turning his 20k pound fortune into 50 million pounds in only 17 years. In 1820, 50 million pounds would be equivalent to 32 billion pounds today. It was at this point that Nathan Rothschild so famously said, “I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the empire on which the sun never sets. The man who controls Britain’s money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply.”
In 1850, Jacob Rothschild’s recorded net worth was 600 million francs, which was significantly more than all the other French bankers combined. In today’s US dollars that would be equivalent to $11.4 billion. James and Nathan Rothschild became two of the richest men in the world in only a few decades. With this vast wealth they built or bought 41 massive mansions and palaces across Europe. The video below (at 2:22) shows just a fraction of their real estate holdings.
In 1840, the Rothschild family became the Bank of England’s bullion brokers.
In 1844, Salomon Rothschild purchased the United Coal Mines of Vitkovice and Austro-Hungarian Blast Furnace Company which went on to become one of the top ten global industrial companies.
In 1845, the Rothschild family was granted exclusive access to build a rail transport company across much of France. The company was called Chemin de Fer du Nord.
In 1871, the Rothschild family raised 5 billion francs so the French government could pay reparations to Prussia. This sum would be equivalent to $95 billion today.
In 1880, the Rothschild family took control of Rio Tinto, ending up with a 30% stake. Rio Tinto is now the 4th largest mining company in the world. In the same year, the Rothschilds founded Imerys, which is currently a world leader in industrial metals mining.
In 1890, the Rothschild family founded the mining company Eramet, which is currently a multi-billion dollar company listed on the Euronext Paris stock exchange.
Kuhn and Loeb, which received financing from the Rothschilds, financed Standard Oil, various profitable railroad projects, and Carnegie’s steel empire. The European Rothschild dynasty also had close financial ties to multiple leading American banks including J.P. Morgan.
In 1886, the French Rothschild bank acquired significant Russian oil fields and formed the Caspian and Black Sea Petroleum Company, which became the world’s second largest oil producer. They sold their interest to Royal Dutch Shell in 1911 for an undisclosed amount.
In 1887, the Rothschild family financed and invested in the Kimberly diamond mines in South Africa, which became De Beers. The Rothschilds were the largest shareholders.
To this day the Rothschild family own and operate some of the largest and most profitable investment banks around the world.
During the first 17 years of his career, Nathan Rothschild’s annual rate of return was 81.4%, while Jacob’s annual rate of return from 1812-1868 was 14%.
Based on historical records and financial calculations it is possible to provide a rough estimate of their wealth today. The following estimate of the Rothschild family fortune will be based on an annual rate of return of 5%, which is extremely conservative given their past track record of using power, political connections, and inside information to make incredibly high annual returns. When the extremely profitable investments listed above are factored in, it is a certainty that they were able to achieve such a modest return.
In 1817, Nathan Rothschild bragged of having 50 million pounds. At a 5% annual rate of return that would equate to roughly 500 billion pounds today. In 1850, Jacob Rothschild was worth 600 million francs. At a 5% annual return that would equate to 860 billion francs, which would have been converted to Euros in 2001 at a 6.56 to 1 ratio, equalling €130 billion. By 2012, that fortune would total €224 billion.
Combined their fortunes would equal more than 1 trillion US dollars, which could do any one of the following:
1. Buy every stock on the Toronto Stock Exchange
2. Support the military of every NATO country combined for a year
3. Buy everyone on earth an iPod
4. Pay off Greece’s debt 2.5 times
5. Run the Australian government for nearly 3 years.
Obviously this estimate is conservative in its own right, and does not take into account the fortunes of the other three brothers who built financial empires in Switzerland, Frankfurt, and Italy. The Rothschild family eventually spread their operations to America, Israel, and most tax-free jurisdictions around the world.
As per the command of the patriarch, Mayar Amschel Rothschild, the family has intermarried and maintained cohesiveness until the present day so the fortune was not squandered or dispersed. One of their websites today reads: “Across two centuries and many generations, the qualities associated with the Rothschild family have remained unchanged: innovation, industriousness and, above all, strength through unity.”
In 1909, British Prime Minister Lloyd George claimed that Lord Nathan Rothschild was the most powerful man in Britain. This is of course at a time when Britain was considered to be one of the world’s preeminent superpowers. During the 20th century the Rothschild family started to disappear from mainstream attention. Many Rothschild financed biographies were released during this time period, which claimed that their fortunes have dwindled in modern times. It should be noted that these biographies have not given any detailed accounting of the families’ assets or mentioned the specific investments that lost more money than was made through some of the world’s most profitable investments listed above.
The real questions that must be asked are why the most powerful family in the history of the world, who financed nations and provided the money to create Israel, are not prominently featured in history courses? And why the media refuses to even mention the name of this incredibly wealthy and powerful family today?
The answers to these questions are one in the same. As the video below proves, nearly the entirety of the American (and European) media are controlled by Jewish Zionists. And these Zionists know that if the world knew that one family controlled more wealth than dozens of poor nations put together, there would be a public outcry.
Featured Video
AIDS Inc. by Gary Null (2007)
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
Clash of Civilization, Iran Part II
By Jamal Kanj – Intifada-Palestine.com – January 14, 2011
Israel’s survival kit is: perpetuate conflict, insecurity to rationalize collective hate and finally playing victim.
Devoid of conflict, Israel implodes internally; without hate, Zionism loses its justification; and playing eternal victim to continue blackmailing the West. Absence of this holy trinity, Israel ceases to exist.
From its inception, the house of Zion has mastered exploiting adversarial powers to advance Israel’s cause. For instance, their influence over the Democratic Party in the US began with President Truman’s bid for 2nd term election in 1948.
Responding to strong opposition from Secretary of State General George Marshall and Department experts urging against recognition of Israel, President Truman replied: “I’m sorry gentlemen but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands [Jewish voters] who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of [voting] Arabs among my constituents”
Zionists influence over liberal American politics was matched with the doctrinal school of Conservative theoreticians aligning the Republican Party’s platform with Israel’s objectives. The Neoconservative Zionists, coined Zioncons, invented the “Clash of Civilization” concept to fight Israel’s wars. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Merck Virologists Admitted to Falsely Certifying Vaccine Efficacy
- Mandatory Folic Acid for every man, woman & child
- Pro-Palestine protesters arrested outside UK’s ruling Labour Conference in Liverpool
- Mauritius denies landing permit to flight from Israel, forcing cancellation: Tour operator
- Israeli finance minister calls for genocidal war on West Bank, annexation of south Lebanon
- 12 Things Your Psychiatrist Was Trained Not to Tell You
- From Unipolar Universalism to Multipolar Civilizational Distinctiveness
- RSF military group defects, joins Sudanese army: State media
- Ireland goalkeeper refuses to play ‘Israel’ as squad weighs boycott
- China pushes back against US on Cuba, Iran
- If Americans Knew
- Israel forces Gazans to live in constant peril – Daily Update
- Deconstructing Netanyahu’s pants-on-fire UN rant – Daily Update
- Trump betrayed voters with his campaign lies and prioritized a foreign country once he took office
- Netanyahu calls Israel’s war in Gaza ‘opposite of genocide’ in UN speech to near-empty hall
- Settler Kidnappings: Torture, Sexual Abuse and Terrorisation of Palestinian Abductees as Israel Deepens Annexation of West Bank
- Gaza winter nears as 162,000 tents become unusable, raising fears of humanitarian crisis
- Netanyahu says, “It’s the opposite of genocide”; UN says Gaza economy is world’s ‘most severe crisis on record’ – Daily Update
- Israel’s US-Backed Assault on Gaza Has Created the ‘World’s Most Severe Economic Crisis on Record’: UN
- ‘Protecting U.S. Citizens’… From Israel
- ‘This is where I live now, the back of a truck’: a day in the life of a grandmother in Gaza
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
- The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
- Study: Ocean Heating Rates From Thousands Of Years Ago ‘Dwarf’ Modern Ocean Heating Rates
- Climate Extremists Target, Attack Large-Scale Power Grid Infrastructure In Germany!
- New Study: Antarctic Ice Melt Has Contributed Less Than 1 Centimeter To Sea Level Rise In The Last 30 Years
