Not the Country Club

You may now kiss the bride

Rats leave a sinking ship – but what is an appropriate metaphor for people who deliberately board a sinking ship? That is where Mahmoud Abbas, the puppet head of the Palestinian “Authority,” has put himself. The fortunes of both of his mentors – the US and Israel – are in precipitous decline. But no matter. Mahmoud Abbas, who a friend of mine has given the nom de guerre of Abu-Hamar (that is, McStupid or “father of a donkey”), wants to be with the losing party.

The winning parties, on the other hand, are in rapid succession lining up on the side of Iran. Saudi Arabia and the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf have re-affirmed their political and economic interdependence with Iran. Afghanistan and Iraq have repeatedly declared that Iran does not support their domestic “insurgencies,” but, on the contrary, plays a crucial stabilizing role (guess which country plays a destabilizing role – you have one choice).

This means two things. First, the dream of Palestine as a multi-ethnic, multi-religious beacon of peaceful coexistence, embracing the entire territory currently called “Israel” and “the Palestine Authority,” is practically dead. Second, the anti-imperialist or post-colonial arrangement that is replacing the dream, which is centered around Iran, is of great concern to the imperial hegemon. Hence, for instance, the faked naval “encounter” between American warships and Iranian patrol boats. The video of the “encounter,” supplied by Iran, clearly demonstrates that nothing sinister happened. As the Iranian government has repeatedly said, this was merely a routine identification procedure of passing ships by Iranian patrol boats. The imperial hegemon and its local apprentice (Israel) have tried to make something more out of it. Abu-Hamar will, no doubt, soon join the chorus.

For nearly forty years, Juan Carlos shut up and did not raise a peep against Franco's dictatorship. He knows all about shutting up to preserve his own status, despite the consequences of his inaction for his nation and for other nations.

That’s the name of a 2006 BBC political drama, their answer to the American show Commander in Chief. PBS has just started to show it. I watched the first two hours last night, and found it rather alarming at several different levels.

Briefly, it is about a working-class woman who, while working as a supermarket manager, gets the idea to run for political office. The twist is that she wants to run outside all of the existing parties, because she thinks they are all drunk with power and politics. She wants to put government in ordinary people’s hands. She declares herself a member of the Purple Alliance (she likes purple), gets substantial funding from the supermarket’s owner (for very vague reasons), hundreds of others run on her party’s list across the country, and, guess what, she becomes Prime Minister of Her Majesty’s Government.

Sounds kind of kooky, but also inspiring in a kooky way. Does she remind you of anyone? For me, she is, of all people, a lot like Hitler. She basically wants to cleanse the corruption that has presumably gathered around the soul of Britain. She wants to bypass all existing organizations, presumably including labour unions, civil society organizations, and so on, and base governmental policies on the opinions of the person in the street, that is, Hitler’s das Volk.

Anyway, I hope the show was not indicative of the level that political discourse has sunk to in Britain under the ministrations of Tony Blair. At one point in the show, it hits Mrs Pritchard’s election committee that hundreds of people that they don’t even know have been elected Members of Parliament on the Purple Alliance’s list, and they wonder if there may be any criminals or other undesirable types among the new MPs. One of them wonders whether they may include any fascists. Another one is even more scared that there may be Marxists among the Purple Alliance’s MPs. The fact that Marxist ideology can be identified as undesirable, or even criminal, in a political candidate, and that it can be presented as equal to or worse than fascism, is hopefully not mainstream opinion in Britain today.

To the show’s cast, like its American counterpart, all of the horrors that Britain and the US have inflicted on Iraq are merely results of mistaken policy. Blair was presumably trying to do good in Iraq, but went about it the wrong way. And Bush is just a good old boy. The enemy, however, is genetically evil. Prime Minister Pritchard’s first duty in office is to deal with a crisis in Iran. Two British soldiers have been captured, and, we are told, the normal procedure in Iran in such cases is to torture and execute them. The fact that no such thing has ever happened in Iran, and has in fact only happened in British-occupied Iraq, is apparently irrelevant. The main thing is to save the soul of Britain. If slandering other nations is what it takes, so be it.

I also noticed some factual errors in the show, such as the mention of the Arabic-speaking province of Iran as the site of Iran’s nuclear activities. That province, in reality, is nowhere near the nuclear sites. Presumably, either the show’s writers did not know this, or else assumed that their audience was unaware of it. Either way, it is a small example of the lack of information that pervades discussion of world affairs in English-speaking countries. More ominously, the show as a whole is suggestive of the fertile soil on which all kinds of ultra-right, libertarian, and fascistic tendencies tend to thrive.

I think there has been a little too much talk lately about the possibility, nay “certainty,” of a US attack on Iran, and far too little analysis of exactly why (in the world!) would such an attack take place. I (obviously?) haven’t been to journalism school, but I have heard that budding journalists are taught to find out the “who, what, when, where, why, and how” of a story. There has been far too much “information” about every element of the supposedly impending war, except for the “why” part of the story, even though the “why” part is obviously the most important part.

Let’s first look back at another one of America’s wars, that is, the war against Serbia. As Chomsky and many other progressive analysts have pointed out over the years, Clinton's war against Serbia was not about the slaughter of Kosovars by Serbs. The slaughter of Kosovars began after the start of the US attack on Serbia. The war was rather about Serbia's adamant refusal to abide by commercial and trade rules that Europe and the US were trying to impose on it. At the time of the war, millions of other people were fooled by the Clinton Administration's rhetoric of "Just War." I think we should avoid making similar mistakes in the current situation.

Therefore, the primary maxim to keep in mind is that every single war that the US has embarked upon has been about promoting the commercial and trade interests of its ruling class. America's official enemies, such as the late Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, have been comprised of groups and individuals who have seriously hindered those class interests. The leaderships of Republican and Democratic Parties share those class interests. That is why we see Barack Obama threatening war against Iran and Pakistan, and also why "Hil" Clinton is more of a Zionist than Olmert. In other words, if either of these individuals were to become president, US policy towards the Middle East would alter not a whit.

I have been extremely concerned about the possibility of a US attack against Iran. Applying the above analysis to the situation, however, I would say that an attack is not likely, as the US would, on balance, have little commercial or trade interest to gain from such an attack. Most of the rest, such as Barack Obama’s obscene threats, are pure rhetoric.

Some commentators have enumerated the deteriorating situation in Iraq, the possibility of an independent attack by Israel on Iran, and Iran’s nuclear energy program as incentives for US military involvement in Iran. However:

a) The US situation in Iraq is not deteriorating. The situation of the Iraqi people has been deteriorating, but that is to the advantage of the US. By the same token, the US does not need a scapegoat for Iraq.

b) The US does not work for Israel. Israel works for the US. Israel will do whatever the US wants it to do, and will refrain from doing whatever the US does not want it to do.

c) Iran's nuclear program is purely about energy production, and the Bush Administration knows it. There is no rational reason to go to war over the nuclear program.

Am I saying we should relax and stop worrying? By no means. What I am saying is that we should base our actions on real facts, rather than facts that the ruling class and its newsmedia want us to believe. What I have begun to realize over the last year or so is that the real problem is much bigger than a war against this or that country, as horrific as such wars may be. The real problem is that the existing political systems tend to give power to individuals who represent anti-human and and-environment interests. That system is the real enemy, and many governments and even supposedly progressive organizations are its components.

Meanwhile, all commentary about US vs Iran, whether from the Right, the “Left,” or the mainstream, has focused on the possibility of war. I think we should spend a little more time analyzing why all these groups are so focused on war. What are they trying to hide. Could it possibly be the fact that none of them have any “clothes”?

But a little more about Iran’s nuclear program, which is supposed to be the “why” of a US attack. Here is a list of some of the proffered reasons for war, along with their rebuttal:

a) “The non-military options have reached a dead-end. Diplomacy is not working.” A dead-end on the path to achieve what? To stop Iran from legally achieving nuclear enrichment and nuclear energy production?

b) “The US is going through the motions of diplomacy because it wants war.” Is this statement not self-contradictory? If the US wanted war, why would it persist so long in pursuing the diplomatic route?

c) “The US, through the UN Security Council, has tried to persuade Iran to abandon uranium enrichment, but Iran has stubbornly refused to comply.” Iran’s refusal has nothing to do with stubbornness, and the US (and the rest of the “Security Council”) are fully aware of that. The refusal has to do with the fact that (i) Iran’s petroleum resources will run out within a single generation, and therefore a replacement energy source is a vital national concern; and (ii) even in the short term, Iran must vigorously pursue nuclear energy, because it has to export as much of its petroleum production to earn foreign currency, rather than to make it available for domestic consumption. Petroleum exports are by far the primary source of revenue for the Iranian economy and government.

Even the progressive commentators tend to confuse Iran’s pursuit of nuclear energy with its presumed pursuit of nuclear weaponry. They begin by criticizing Western efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear energy work, but then attribute these efforts to a fear of nuclear proliferation. But you can’t have it both ways. The cause of Western concern has little to do with proliferation of nuclear weapons, and much to do with a fear of an independent Iran setting an example for the rest of the developing world.

Dread and foreboding filled the city’s atmosphere. The worst part of it all was the uncertainty. No-one knew who the bombers were or where they would strike next. And the city… wasn’t even Baghdad.

No… it was London. A bombing attempt had been “foiled” by the police and security forces. The city that should long ago have been racked with guilt, and was not, for the suffering that its national government had brought to the people of Iraq, was now racked with fear – all because of a single bombing attempt. The million Iraqis that the British and their criminal partners have killed or caused to die, the millions of Iraqis that have suffered unspeakable injuries and have had their lives and their country forever ruined – all of that meant nothing to the noble British race. The actual daily bombings in Iraq mean nothing to them. But a bombing attempt filled them with foreboding and a sense of doom.

To me, the event brings to the surface, yet again, the question of whether the human race is inherently and irredeemably evil. Do even the best and most altruistic of us only really care only about their own personal safety and apparent well-being? And if so, is there really any hope at all for this miserable world and this miserable species?

I have not blogged for a while. In fact, I have not really done much serious thinking for a while. These days, I often feel tempted to take Voltaire’s advice near the end of Candide, and concentrate on “cultivating my own garden” and consigning the rest of the world to the hell it seems to be bound for. Is the human species really worth worrying about? Is it not the case that the essential character of the human being negates the very possibility of a better future?

An interested reader of this blog, whom I'll identify as Mike S. from Winnipeg, having noticed the absence of activity on this blog, kindly wrote me a couple of days ago to ask about my welfare. He added:

You posted on Iran's president and his (misrepresented) remarks about Israel a while back. I thought this piece by Juan Cole might interest you:

Informed Comment - Jun 26, 2007

http://www.juancole.com/2007/06/ahmadinejad-i-am-not-anti-semitic.html

Ahmadinejad: "I am not anti-Semitic"

"Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul continue to show themselves among the few in Congress with any integrity and backbone. They declined to go along with a resolution charging Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with incitement to genocide, given his alleged call for Israel to be 'wiped off the face of the map.'

"As most of my readers know, Ahmadinejad did not use that phrase in Persian. He quoted an old saying of Ayatollah Khomeini calling for “this occupation regime over Jerusalem" to "vanish from the page of time.” Calling for a regime to vanish is not the same as calling for people to be killed. Ahmadinejad has not to my knowledge called for anyone to be killed...."

Thanks Mike.

Our entire “reality” is a tissue of lies and misrepresentations. Nearly every “truth” and “fact” that we believe in… is some kind of lie. Given the falseness of our “reality” and the apparently innate corruptness of the character of our species, does it make any sense to hold on to a dream for a better future?

Here is part of my reply to Mike:

I am physically fine, but I don't feel quite motivated to spend much time on blogging. I guess there are two factors involved: (1) I see one of the tasks of people like me to be to prod the conscience of the world. Since Israel's invasion of Lebanon, though, I am not so sure the world has a conscience. (2) A related and possibly more important point is that I am no longer so sure I know what the solution is. The human species seems so profoundly evil and incorrigible to me right now that I suspect there may be no solution. And yet... I hold on to the dream of a better world, though the dream keeps receding. It looks more and more like nothing more than a dream, an unrealistic aspiration of overly optimistic idealists....

But, on the other hand… maybe the dream can some day become a reality…

This is how:

We are evil, but only conditionally so – and not inherently. We are evil as servants of the ruling classes and their propagandists who have indoctrinated us with a false picture of reality and a false picture of our own best interests. The evil does not inhere in us, but in them. Yet they cannot be fought with bombs and guns, because they possess far more powerful arsenals as well as the ruthlessness to use those arsenals. They can be fought by disseminating knowledge about the real nature of reality and about the lies we have been told about it. A New Enlightenment can save – and redeem – the human species and simultaneously save the world.

Hard on the heels of the surveys that detailed the shocking attitudes of the American soldiers in Iraq towards torture, the Iraqi people, and so on, which were released on May 4, I received a series of emails (beginning on May 8) urging me to watch some videos that portrayed American soldiers as victims. I am not going to mention the sender's name (or rather his pseudonym) or the titles of the videos that he wanted me to watch, as I do not want to inadvertently assist his propaganda campaign, but I thought I should mention the incident anyway, as other progressive bloggers may have received those same emails as well.

With the ever more obvious resemblance between the Iraq invasion (and the subsequent destruction of that country) and many events and lies of the Second World War (for instance, Hitler’s invasion of Poland on the pretext of a false-flag story and, later on, the deliberate and covered-up targeting of German civilian populations in Allied bombing campaigns), it would not be farfetched to suppose that some US military types are now getting concerned that a similar outcome may follow for them. In other words, they may be concerned that even America’s overwhelming politico-military might may not be enough to save them from Nuremberg-like war crimes trials. It is true that no-one has been tried for the bombings of the German cities, and most of the perpetrators are dead and gone now, but the truth has been seeping out more and more.

Today’s world is a very different world than the world of the 1940s, and the wide availability of information may yet prove to be the Achilles Heel of today’s war criminals. The US military may, therefore, be feeling an urgent need to deflect the blame for Iraq from itself onto the politicians.

Do you know what the popular anti-war slogan “Bush lied; my son died” means? If you do, you are, believe it or not, a member of some kind of intellectual elite.

Put simply, the Americans who are outside the said "intellectual elite" interpret the slogan this way: “Bush said my son wasn’t going to die, but he did.” Let’s call that the A version of the slogan. These people fail to see that the slogan actually means: “Bush’s lies gave rise to a war, in which my son died.”

The important point is that the basic slogan sounds nonsensical to the people in the A group. Their plausible-sounding objection to the slogan is this: “In a war, some soldiers are going to get killed. That is the reality of warfare. So it is unfair to call Bush a liar.”

I think this is really more serious than a simple misunderstanding. It hints at the enormity of the task facing the progressive movement, because it shows that the basic presuppositions of a large part of their potential audience are different than their own presuppositions. This potential audience is so backward politically that it has failed to perceive the chain of events, so clear to us, that led from the lies of Bush and his cronies to the war in Iraq.

Some conspiracy theorists are fond of the idea that US aggression against the rest of the world was the product of a so-called "Secret Government" that came into being after the Second World War. Some of these people are simply naive and misinformed. The rest, neither naive nor misinformed, are in fact highly worldly and knowledgeable. They know very well that (a) the criminal atrocities of the United States began long before the last world war, and that (b) the scale of those crimes has been several orders of magnitude larger than the relatively minor crimes that these individuals choose to enumerate.

So, why do they do it? Why do they try to minimize the spatial and temporal dimensions of American criminality? The answer should be obvious: (a) as long as their audience has the impression that the crimes began at a relatively recent period, it can easily be kept under the illusion that the United States was “good” prior to that time, and that the recent deviation can be corrected within the system; and (b) as long as people do not know the actual scale of the crimes and their systemic nature, they can be kept under the illusion that the crimes were the work of a few “bad apples.” To cite a recent news item, the revelation about the murder of some hundreds of Korean refugees by American soldiers during the Korean War serves to reinforce the false impression that this was somehow an aberration peculiar to a particular situation in a particular war. It was not. Even in that war, it was not peculiar to that situation. America’s wanton bombardment of Korea killed hundreds of thousands of Koreans who had nothing to do with the war. And the criminality began long, long, before the Korean War…

Simon Bolivar, the liberator of several South American countries, was one of the early targets of American aggression. Nearly two hundreds years ago, he had to detain two US frigates who were carrying a shipment of arms to the Spanish! Yes, the US was trying to keep South America subject to Spanish colonialism! Bolivar complains: “What brothers are these that fail to recognize our independence even after Europe has done so?” At about the same time, he wrote in a letter that “The United States of North America seems destined by providence to plague [Latin] America with misery in the name of liberty.” Nearly two hundreds years have passed, yet those words could have been written yesterday!

Surely it must be more than just a coincidence to see two news stories on the same day about the disappearance of honey bees in Canada and bumblebees in Britain:

Theory: Cellphone radiation killing honeybees?

Scientists fear flight of Britain's bumblebees

The investigation of the reason or reasons for the disappearance of these species is still at the purely speculative stage. What I do know is that each summer I see fewer and fewer of many different kinds of insects than the year before. I hope there are a lot of other people who are as alarmed by this as I am.

This:



was one of the many tools that were used to accomplish this:

"We gathered intelligence"

That's why Tony "Bliar" Blair was in such a tizzy to get them out, and it is also why the spies themselves were confessing to everything -- so they could get out. Their official mission (anti-smuggling) was just a cover and an instrument for their real mission (gathering information from fishermen and others about Iranian activities in the area).

Update: British spies being tortured in Iran.

The following was my reply to an editorial in a major newspaper that bemoaned the supposed weakness of the UN in dealing with the recent standoff between Iran and the UK:

Dear Editor,

Re "Weak UN stand fails Iran captives" (Editorial, April 3)

In the lawless world we live in, it is interesting that mainstream Western newsmedia only notice the lawless behaviour of the underdogs.

George W. Bush invaded Iraq because Saddam had threatened to kill his father, and now your newspaper offers that invasion an imprimatur of legality.

Israel invaded and for all practical purposes destroyed Lebanon, and yet the Western newsmedia did not appear to find anything illegal in that. After all, two Israel soldiers had been kidnapped. According to our newsmedia, that was justification enough.

Caught between the lawless and criminal behaviour of Western and Western-supported governments and the blindness of the Western newsmedia, it would be strange and immoral if threatened countries did not take the law into their own hands.

President Ahmadinejad exchanges jokes with the freed British sailors

I wonder if the five Iranian hostages held by the US in Iraq will also be in a mood for exchanging jokes when (and if) they are released. Somehow, I doubt it...

The “United Nations” sure knows which side its bread is buttered on. It has been so very prompt in demanding the release of the British soldiers who are being held (in luxury) in Iran. Last year, though, the same “United Nations” was so very careful not to condemn Israel’s destruction of Lebanon, even though thousands of people were being killed, and hundreds of thousands of other people were wantonly being made homeless. When it finally, and very politely, begged Israel to please leave Lebanon, it did it in the most courteous possible terms, observing all possible protocols, including, most especially, the required mantra about the blame that falls on both sides.

This time, though, there is no mention of the blame that falls on both sides. Are the British soldiers guilty of any crime? That does not seem to concern the United Nations. Are Britain’s military operations in the Persian Gulf legitimate? Ditto. Does the American scare tactic of sending naval carriers with hundreds of cruise missiles, including nuclear ones, into the Persian Gulf accord with any kind of international law, especially when we are really talking about a minor dispute between two other nations? Ditto again.

Britain and the United States must understand that the days of empires are over. The sun has set over both of their empires, and the sooner they accept that fact, the fewer people will get killed because of their imperial adventures. If the “United Nations” is unwilling and unable, and essentially lacking the courage, to make this point, it has become the Iranian government’s reluctant duty to substitute itself for the United Nations, and to speak as the representative of a future humanity when logic and good will, not the irrationality of superior force, will guide world affairs.

The Western newsmedia's version of reality:

Iran claims it needs the uranium enrichment for electricity generating purposes, while the West fears the program could be used for making nuclear arms.

But could this be the real reality:

The West claims it fears Iran's uranium enrichment program could be used for making nuclear arms, while Iran needs the program for electricity generating purposes.

Why don't the newsmedia ever say "the West claims such-and-such," but it is always "Iran claims such-and-such"?

Update: The above quote is far from an isolated case. Also, the language is used in everything that has to do with Iran, and not just the nuclear issue. For instance:

Britain and Iran are at a standoff over the 15 seized sailors and marines. Britain said they were in Iraqi waters when detained, but Iran has contended the Britons entered its waters illegally.

It turns out that women who eat a lot of beef while pregnant endanger the procreativity of their sons.

Just over a year ago, I asked the question: What will it take to dump Dubya?. His approval ratings had dropped below the mid-30s range, and it puzzled me that 34% percent of the American people still supported him, despite his crimes and failures. I asked myself "What more does he have to do, or rather fail to do, to convince the other 34% that they had made a mistake in electing him?"

During the intervening year, his approval rating climbed by a few points, but it is back down to the 30% range again, and there is no reason to believe that it will ever increase again. The overwhelming sense of failure that has overtaken his presidency and the American people as a whole is palpable and inescapable, and nothing seems to be able to change that. It used to be that apparent "successes" in the "war on terror" would raise his profile a bit -- not by much, but by a little anyway. Not any longer. The "confessions" of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the supposed mastermind of 9/11 and just about every other terrorist attack in history, helped Dubya not at all.

So the question I have to ask again, but in a slightly different sense, is "What will it take to dump Dubya?" Should not there be a lower limit in a political leader's approval rating below which he will not be allowed to go? In other words, should there not be an automatic mechanism for removing a political leader that is triggered when his approval rating falls below a set limit? Or at least should there not be a mechanism for a recall referendum that is triggered by such an eventuality? For instance, perhaps there should be a referendum on keeping the leader when his/her approval rating falls below 40% or so.

As I said, Dubya's approval rating does not seem to have any upward potential, to use a business-type term. At the current rate of descent, it will probably fall below 25% by the end of his second term. What kind of legitimacy could a political leader have who is rejected by three quarters of the population? Is this lack of legitimacy, this sham legitimacy, just another price the American people have to pay for their "freedoms"?

U.N. rights envoy likens Israeli actions to apartheid

"[Jewish] settlers, largely unrestrained by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), subject many Palestinians to a reign of terror -- particularly in Hebron."

"Iran has balls. Few other states do, even while their populations crave stronger policies vis-à-vis Washington."

--quoted from Graham Fuller, former CIA analyst and vice-chairman of the National Intelligence Council in Washington

South Africa has "balls" too!

Has any nation in the history of the world ever been asked to give up the right to resist aggression? Has any individual, except for slaves, ever been asked to give up the right to resist attacks and seek freedom from oppression?

It is a unique historical phenomenon that Palestinians are being asked to give up precisely those rights. Israel is refusing to deal with the new Palestinian unity government. Why? Because, to quote Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres, "If this is a government that does not renounce terror, why should it be helped?” And what does Peres mean by “terror”? He is referring to the Palestinian unity government’s declaration that resistance in all its forms, especially non-violent resistance, to the occupation and continuing Israeli aggression is a legitimate right.

Who would in their right mind say this is not a legitimate right? Would you? Apparently the United States government, aka Israel’s slave, would say that. It is the only government in the world that, following the Israeli government’s lead, has dismissed the Palestinian unity government. According to Nancy Beck, the US State Department spokesperson, “The national unity government's platform reference to the right of resistance is disturbing and contradicts the quartet principle of renunciation of violence.” Since when has a renunciation of violence included the renunciation of the right of self-defence? I repeat, can a free person renounce the right to resist aggression and violence?

Update: Quote from Olmert: "We can't have contact with members of a government that justifies resistance, or in other words, terror." Resistance to oppression is "terror" -- but what else is new.

The CNN sat on this news item for nearly 48 hours, and finally reported it on March 15. The rest of the media had already reported it two days earlier. Also interesting is the fact that although the CNN cited the Associated Press (AP) as the source, the item has disappeared from the AP’s website, or at least my efforts to find it on that website were fruitless. So, this is also a post about the way inconvenient news are marginalized and/or suppressed by the newsmedia and news agencies. The following is an excerpt from the news item:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democratic leaders are stripping from a military spending bill for the war in Iraq a requirement that President Bush gain approval from Congress before moving against Iran.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, and other leaders agreed to remove the requirement concerning Iran after conservative Democrats as well as other lawmakers worried about its possible impact on Israel, officials said Monday…

The Iran-related proposal stemmed from a desire to make sure Bush did not launch an attack without going to Congress for approval, but drew opposition from numerous members of the rank and file in a series of closed-door sessions last week.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nevada, said in an interview that there is widespread fear in Israel about Iran, which is believed to be seeking nuclear weapons and has expressed unremitting hostility about the Jewish state.

"It would take away perhaps the most important negotiating tool that the U.S. has when it comes to Iran," she said of the now-abandoned provision.

"I didn't think it was a very wise idea to take things off the table if you're trying to get people to modify their behavior and normalize it in a civilized way," said Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-New York.

Several officials said there was widespread opposition to the proposal at a closed-door meeting last week of conservative and moderate Democrats, who said they feared tying the hands of the administration when dealing with an unpredictable and potentially hostile regime in Tehran…

"It is simply not consistent for anyone to demand aggressive action against the menace posed by the Iranian regime while at the same time acquiescing in a retreat from Iraq that would leave our worst enemies dramatically emboldened and Israel's best friend, the United States, dangerously weakened," Cheney said.

Okay, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed hasn't actually confessed to designing the Nazi gas chambers -- but only because he wasn't born yet. Considering the persuastion methods used at the CIA's secret jails, though, I wouldn't be surprised if he has in fact made such a "confession" anyway.

They keep feeding us "confessions" that have been extracted through torture, and the public keeps eating it all up. After all, if the information came from government sources, it must be true, right?... But what else is new.

Update: The CIA abused his children to force him to "confess"

"We're pretty vigilant in terms of monitoring the skies," said Major Jason Proulx, a NORAD public affairs officer. "But what we do is we assess whether it poses a risk or a threat. If it doesn't pose a threat, it's not something we wouldn't express further interest in."

Somehow, I feel much safer knowing that.

Dick Cheney has finally let the cat out of the bag.

Guatemala's native priests have vowed to use ritual cleansing ceremnies to purify ancient burial grounds (shown above) that are to be visited by Bush today. The news has been reported by hundreds of news organs. The reason I decided to post about it was the fact that fewer than 1 out of every 25 of those news organs (none in North America) bothered to mention the reason for the Mayan people's anger. Much of the rest of the newsmedia have trivialized or marginalized this news item, for instance by assigning it to the "Offbeat" section (as in USA Today). The previous efforts of the powerful to suppress the historical truth have obviously failed in Guatemala, as they have and will elsewhere.

According to Reuters:

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Mayan leaders will spiritually "cleanse" ancient ruins in Guatemala after a visit by U.S. President George W. Bush, unpopular here because of foreign policies going back to Central America's civil wars.

The leaders said they would hold a spiritual ceremony to restore "peace and harmony" at the Mayan ruins of Iximche after Bush tours the site on Monday.

"No, Mr. Bush, you cannot trample and degrade the memory of our ancestors," said indigenous leader Rodolfo Pocop during a press conference. "This is not your ranch in Texas." ...

The CIA helped overthrow a democratically elected socialist government in Guatemala in 1954 and U.S.-backed troops destroyed entire Mayan villages in a counter-insurgency campaign at the peak of Guatemala's 1960-96 civil war.

U.S. involvement in the war, which left nearly a quarter of a million people dead or missing, makes Bush's presence in Guatemala offensive to the nation's ethnic Mayan people, youth leader Jorge Morales Toj said. ...

Bush will visit farm cooperatives and schools in the Chimaltenango district to the west of the capital, an area where forensic scientist have uncovered numerous mass graves from wartime massacres. ...

The complete lack of availability of reliable information to the English-speaking general public about President Ahmadinejad of Iran, and the abundance of lies perpetrated by the Western governments and their subservient newsmedia, have prompted me to collect some excerpts from his speeches, open letters, and interviews (along with a link to the complete texts). He is very articulate, and the best way to understand his views is to read the views themselves, undistorted by the Western media.

What will people do?
After the garden is gone
What will people say?
After the garden ...

Where will people go?

After the garden is gone
What will people know?

After the garden

After the garden is gone
After the garden is gone

---Neil Young

Reading the newsmedia’s daily dose of lies, their errors of omission and commission, has become an almost intolerable exercise for me. Jimmy Carter’s latest book is a refreshing change. The content of Jimmy Carter's book about Palestine has surprised me on so many levels that I don't know where to begin. Probably the biggest surprise has been that he doesn't write like a politician. He fearlessly tells the truth, and, with his background, he is in a position to know exactly what the truth is. His sole interest seems to be to tell the truth, rather than to protect any interests, which is again quite astonishing, especially in an ex-politician. Wasn’t politics supposed to be an institution whose function was to protect the interests of one socioeconomic class or another?

He tells the whole truth, and unhesitatingly points out lies and hypocrisies. To give a couple of brief examples: He explains that Israel’s supposed withdrawal from Gaza was no withdrawal at all, because Gaza remained completely under Israeli control. And he minces no words in describing Israel’s “security fence” as an “imprisonment wall.”

Predictably, various groups and individuals have accused Carter of being wrong or one-sided in his views. The reason they are so furious about the book is in fact the exact opposite of the expressed reasons. They hate the book exactly because it is not wrong or one-sided. In that sense, it is quite unlike nearly the entire content of the propaganda fed to us by the “newsmedia” and politicians. Reading what Jimmy Carter reveals will make you angry. For a change, though, what makes you angry will be the things that a politician is revealing, and not the things that he/she is hiding.

Update: President Carter's LA Times article

Turning certain subject into taboos is society’s way of dealing with deeply uncomfortable truths; in other words, it is society’s way of living with big lies.

Imperialism, that is, the politico-economic exploitation of the poor countries by and for the benefit of the rich ones, is one example. In the Third World, imperialism is not a taboo subject. Nearly everyone in the poor countries is aware of it, whether they call it by that name or think of it in some other way. For instance, it is often expressed as a deep sense of revulsion against the US government. In the US, this sentiment is dismissed as ‘anti-Americanism.’ Americans, as well as citizens of the other rich countries, have no wish to know how the wealth of their countries has been acquired. They prefer to sweep the whole mess under the carpet, and label any opposition to imperialism as ‘clash of civilizations,’ ‘extremism,’ or worse.

A more recent taboo arose out of the 9/11 events. Beginning on that very day, various authority figures, as well as the subservient Western newsmedia, have drummed into our brains that we were not supposed to talk about the causes of those attacks. More specifically, we were not supposed to talk about the exact mechanism by which a small group of individuals were led to contemplate and carry out this act. We were not supposed to think about the events that led to it or the reasoning that went into it. Instead, we were supposed to think of it as ‘an attack on our freedoms.’

The same thing can be said about the Jewish Holocaust. Beginning with the establishment of the State of Israel, discussion of the Holocaust turned into a taboo subject. Anyone who raised any questions about the official Holocaust doctrine was immediately branded an ‘anti-Semite,’ an ‘ultra-rightist,’ or worse. People were not supposed to talk about the chain of reasoning that led from the Holocaust to the establishment of the State of Israel.

The same Western powers who, in the 1930s, had turned away ships carrying Jewish refugees from their own shores, the same Western powers whose opinion of Jewish immigration was summarized as “None is too many,” had suddenly transformed themselves into the Jewish people’s best friends. We were not, however, supposed to wonder about their change of heart. It was a taboo to ask: Did the Western powers establish Israel simply as a destabilizing influence in the Middle East, so as to facilitate the continuation and deepening of imperialist exploitation in that region? It was a taboo to ask: Did the Western powers exploit the Holocaust to further their own agenda in the Middle East? It was a taboo to ask: Were the Jewish people doubly victimized, first by the Nazis, and then by the Western powers?

Israeli girls writing messages on bombs destined for Lebanon

Bachelet: "Boy you are fat!"

Harper: "The pot calling the kettle..."

Dubya: "They are giving my little Steve a hard time again!"

Considering the fact that the North Korean nuclear test has been condemned by everyone, from Thailand to Pakistan (!), Washington’s reaction has been very curious. The US has labeled it “provocative,” and has made the routine call for UN Security Council action. At another level, though, the US reaction has been predictable. The nuclear test is simply both good and bad for the US Administration’s interests.

With the US government focused on consolidating its geopolitical interests in the Middle East through a military attack on Iran, the North Korean test could not have come at a worse time. If an attack on Iran was difficult to justify before, both to the domestic US audience and to the world at large, it is that much more difficult to justify now.

There has been some talk in the last couple of weeks about a possible “October surprise” to boost the Republican Party’s dismal situation prior to the November elections. One possible “surprise” that was suggested was an attack on Iran, completely out of the blue and with no prior hint that an attack was actually coming (which is the way Israel always does these things, by the way). Prior to the Korean nuclear test, the scenario seemed credible, as it could feasibly improve the GOP’s position. An attack on Iran seems out of the question now, as it would simply be greeted with shock, both within the US and everywhere else (except in Israel).

In terms of US domestic politics, the test was potentially both helpful and harmful to GOP interests. It was helpful because, contrary to facts and logic, the Republicans are seen as the security party. In that sense, many Americans seem to live in a Western movie, with Republican white hats relentlessly pursuing the outlaws. It goes without saying that a tough sheriff would never even think of negotiating with or, God forbid, “appeasing” the black hats.

To the saner portion of the US population, though, the nuclear test would be more proof, if any more proof were needed, of the catastrophic and criminal failure of US foreign policy.

Whoops, sorry... wrong picture.



Harper cleverly raised his left arm.

You know who the 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus was. I know who the 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus was. We all know who the 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus was. None of us had heard of him until last week, but the "news" media have put an end to that.

But nobody in the “news” media seems to know who the late Ayatollah Khomeini was!!!

The newsmedia have told us, ad nauseum, that Pope Benedict XVI, when making his insulting remarks about Islam, was “merely” quoting -- guess who -- the 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus.

But no-one in the mainstream newsmedia -- yes, no-one -- has yet bothered to discuss the triple misrepresentation of President Ahmadinejad’s remarks about Israel. Triple misrepresentation because:

1 – What President Ahmadinejad actually said was that Israel "should be eliminated from the pages of history.” He did not say “Israel should be wiped off the map.”

2 – The Western newsmedia never bothered to report that President Ahmadinejad was merely quoting the late Ayatollah Khomeini.

3 - And, of course, the Western newsmedia never bothered to mention that the distorted translation of President Ahmadinejad’s remarks was the work of the New York Times reporter Nazli Fathi.

The Western newsmedia have even gone to the trouble of publishing the full text of the Pope's horribly boring lecture (it is available at hundreds of sites online). Not one Western news organ, however, has yet published the full text of President Ahmadinejad's speech, whose mistranslation was discussed here, and which was infinitely more interesting and readable.

The Western newsmedia have once again revealed the hypocrisy of their pretensions of liberalism. None of President Ahmadinejad's speeches contain a single offensive word against any other religion or race, while the Pope's speech was clearly offensive for the adherents of another religion. And yet the Western media have made it their mission to defend the Pope...

You may have noticed that I did not say the Pope intended to offend anyone. In other words, I am not saying the actual content of his speech was offensive. In the same way that the Western newsmedia have refused to discuss the actual content of President Ahmadinejad's speeches, I won't bother to discuss the actual content of the Pope's lecture.

Update: President Ahmadinejad, who has long suffered from the Western media's distortions of his words, defends the Pope:

Iran plays down row over Pope (This news item appeared this morning in the online edition of Edinburgh News, later to disappear and be replaced by another news item! The Press moves in mysterious ways.)

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today said he respects Pope Benedict XVI, in a move seen to be downplaying the pontiff's remarks on Islam and holy war...

Ahmadinejad said: "Regarding the issue of the Pope's comments, we respect the Pope and all of those who are interested in peace and justice."

Vatican: Ahmadinejad defends Pope

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reportedly defended on Monday Pope Benedict XVI over his quotation of Medieval commentary linking Islam to violence. Addressing a joint press conference with Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in Caracas, Ahmadinejad said "we respect the Pope and everyone must be interested in peace." Speaking one day after Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei accused the pontiff of being part of a "US-Zionist crusade" against Islam, Iran's president said the pontiff's words were taken out of context...

"There is no doubt that there are those who release incorrect information," Ahmadinejad was also quoted as saying, hinting that Benedict's words were "modified."

An Israeli recently arrives at London's Heathrow airport. As he fills out a form, the customs officer asks him: "Occupation?"

The Israeli promptly replies: "No, just visiting!"


More Lebanese jokes about their situation and their imperial neighbour:


Three Hezbollah fighters run out of Beirut's southern suburbs after Israeli raids, flashing the victory sign. Actually, no. They were really pointing out that there were only two buildings left standing.

Why did rents go up in Ain el-Rummaneh district overlooking the southern suburbs? Because it has a sea view now!

Why are coquettish elderly Lebanese women very happy about the war? Because it took them back 30 years.

Why will Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah chief, win the Nobel Prize for education? Because he is the only man who sent one million people to school in just two days.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was sitting in his office wondering how to invade Lebanon when his telephone rang. Beirut's most famous imaginary character announces to him in a heavily accented voice: "This is Abul Abed and I am calling to tell you that we are officially declaring war on you." "How big is your army?" replies Olmert. "Right now," said Abul Abed, "there is myself, my cousin Mustafa, my next-door neighbor Abu Khaled, and the whole team from the teahouse. That makes eight!" Olmert paused. "I must tell you Abul Abed, that I have 1 million men in my army waiting to move on my command." Abul Abed paused, then said: "Mr. Olmert, the war is still on! We have managed to acquire some infantry equipment!" "And what equipment would that be Abul Abed?", Olmert asked. "Well sir, we have two Mercedes 180s, and a truck." "I must tell you Abul Abed that I have 10,000 bombers and 20,000 fighter planes. My military complex is surrounded by laser-guided, surface-to-air missile sites. And since we last spoke, I've increased my army to 2 million!" "Mr. Olmert, we have to call off this war," said Abul Abed. "I'm sorry to hear that," said Olmert. "Why the sudden change of heart?" "Well," said Abul Abed, "we've come to realize that there is no way we can feed 2 million prisoners!"

Olmert sent a commando operation deep into Lebanon. Mission: Capture Lebanese diva Fairuz. He insists on finding the only bridge he did not destroy: An imaginary bridge evoked for decades in a romantic Fairuz aria. "On the bridge 'Lawziyeh' under the shade of the leaves," goes the song.

Early one day, a man rushes desperately to the dentist. "Please take out my bridge, or the Israelis will bomb it!"

After Saudi Arabia decided to donate half a billion dollars to rebuild Lebanon, Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, ordered the capture of six Israeli soldiers at the border.

Amid a mass evacuation of foreign nationals from Lebanon, Palestinian refugees who have been stranded in Lebanon for nearly 60 years are ecstatic: The Palestinian Authority has decided to evacuate its nationals as well.

Source

A couple of night ago I saw the documentary Why We Fight on CBC. To understand American militarism, you need to understand the reasons for it. You need to understand the "Why." Every other documentary I have watched on the subject, including Michael Moore's "Farenheit 911," has mainly tackled the "How." "Why We Fight" gives far more far-reaching answers to the first question than one expects from a fairly mainstream documentary, which is essentially what it is.

It is built around President Eisenhower's words of warning, as he was leaving office, about the "military-industrial complex" . We all think we have heard his message. This movie proves that we have not been allowed to notice the important second part of Ike's warning:

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

"We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

The movie is an exposition and indictment of the dialogue of alienation that characterizes not only American militarism, but also American politics, and American society itself.

The latest quote from the Brain:

"Sometimes I'm happy, you know. But war is not a time of joy."

Three Canadian Members of Parliament are currently on a fact-finding mission in Lebanon. Below is from a report on their findings published in today's Toronto Star. It is written by Andrew Mills, who has been doing a first-class job of reporting Israel's war on Lebanon:

AITAROUN, LEBANON—The Canadian government must begin direct talks with militant groups such as Hezbollah to effectively bring a peaceful end to conflicts like the one that has ravaged Lebanon this summer, Toronto Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj says.

Standing at the spot where an Israeli air strike killed several members of a Montreal family last month, Wrzesnewskyj said Israel's summer offensive against Lebanon was nothing less than "state terrorism."

"Over 1,200 dead and counting. Over 40,000 apartments and houses flattened. A country's infrastructure dismembered. You look around here," said Wrzesnewskyj. "I believe what's happened is absolutely criminal."

It was one of the strongest statements a Liberal MP has made against Israel since July 12, when it launched air, land and sea attacks after guerrillas from the militant group Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others in a cross-border raid.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper initially called the ensuing Israeli onslaught a "measured response" to the raid, but as the civilian death toll mounted, he later toned down his comments saying such judgments had become more difficult as the war escalated.

But for the three Canadian opposition MPs who yesterday toured the wasteland of south Lebanon on a fact-finding mission, Israel's attacks here have been anything but measured.

"Those who were injured and killed on the Israeli side of the border feel equally devastated, but the extent of the damage is far greater here. And to say that Israel's response was a measured response is just so far out of whack from reality," said NDP MP Peggy Nash.

Wrzesnewskyj said even if Canada had attempted to play a role, the country's anti-terrorism legislation prevents it from having any contact with groups listed as terrorist organizations under the criminal code.

"We can't shackle ourselves by saying, `We're not going to talk,'" he said. "We must talk."

All three MPs here speculated that Conservatives' unwillingness to send a representative is reflective of their support for Israel's government.

The MPs travelled through areas where Israeli forces have destroyed homes, businesses and hundreds of civilian lives and ended in this border village where diggers have spent days scraping through debris in a delicate effort to remove the bodies of the al-Akhras family.

The Montreal couple, their four young children and other family members, were caught in their ancestral village when the fighting broke out. The home they had sheltered in took a direct hit on July 16.

Wrzesnewskyj called for a full international investigation of attacks on civilians.

"This sort of state impunity has to end," he said. "It's almost having to save a people from themselves. What do you think (Israel's) breeding here? Extremism."

Why do we love Fidel?
Because we love the idea of “Fidel”
Because we think there has to be some other way
That there must be more to life and to living than this
That life and living must have some meaning too

We loathe the things that they force down our throats day and night
We love freedom:
Freedom from the chains of television and commercials
Freedom from the chains of futility
Freedom from humiliation

Yet, we know Fidel’s time is past
We know the idea of “Fidel,” too, will some day succumb to the unipolar world that is getting narrower every day
Still, we keep hoping
Still, we see signs that the idea of “Fidel” may be permeating into other places too
Fidel who, once the Soviet Union fell, was left isolated and friendless, is finding new friends and allies

But the unipolar world, too, is hard at work
Its slogan is “You are either with us or with the terrorists”
Its slogan is “democracy,” but only if democracy doesn’t harm its own interests
It supports all autocratic governments, but considers Fidel a dictator
A dictator who has given free education and healthcare to his country’s people
And many other things besides
So we must either be with Bush or with Fidel

But even if some day Fidel had to leave, he will go with honor
He will hold his head high
The same way that his nation – his comrades – hold their heads high
Because he never yielded
He was never like autocratic rulers who sell everything that they have and that they are, all in return for worldly power and status

Fidel will become immortal
Because there will never be another Fidel
In the same way that there will never be another Gandhi, another Mossadegh, or another Allende
And, yes, another Khomeini or another Arafat

And yet…
Such words don’t give us fancy clothes
They don’t give us credit cards, loans, debt, and alienation
They don’t give us the “American Dream”

So, long live CNN and the “free” press, the boundaries of whose freedom are set by multinational corporations!
Long live the hundreds of meaningless brand names, trade marks and logos!
Long live luxury cars and even more luxurious houses, which most of us only see in our dreams!
Long live the material world!

Source: Beyond Words

Happy 80th, and many more! Please get well!

To sign the statement below, already signed by over 16,000 individuals and over 200 organizations, go here

"As a result of the communication of Fidel Castro on his state of health and the provisional delegation of his responsibilities, high ranking U.S officials have formulated more explicit statements about the immediate future of Cuba. The Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez said that 'the moment has arrived for a true transition towards a true democracy' and the White House spokesman Tony Snow said that his government is 'ready and eager to provide humanitarian, economic and other aid to the people of Cuba', as was recently reiterated by President Bush.

"Already the 'Commission for Assistance to a free Cuba', presided over by the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, pointed out in a report issued in June 'the urgency of working today to ensure that the Castro regime's succession strategy does not succeed' and President Bush indicated that this document 'demonstrates that we are actively working for change in Cuba, not simply waiting for change'. The Department of State has emphasized that the plan includes measures that will remain secret 'for reasons of national security' and to assure its 'effective implementation'.

"It is not difficult to imagine the character of such measures and the 'announced assistance' if one considers the militarization of the foreign policy of the present American administration and its performance in Iraq.

"In front of this increasing threat against the integrity of a nation, and the peace and the security of Latin America and the world, we the signatories listed below demand that the government of the United States respect the sovereignty of Cuba. We must prevent a new aggression at all cost."

Israel, confronted with the world’s revulsion at its bombings of civilian targets, has claimed that Hezbollah fighters and munitions are dispersed and hidden among Shia civilian populations. According to Israel, Hezbollah is to blame for the civilian deaths.

Israel’s bombing of Lebanon’s Christian areas has finally put the lie to that claim, as there are no Hezbollah targets in Christian areas.

Israel has a long tradition of deliberately targeting civilian populations in order to erode an enemy nation’s morale. It is now engaged in punishing all sectors of the Lebanese population for having joined hands to repel their common enemy.

The absurd intensity of Israel's attack on Lebanon was probably due to the fact that the war on Lebanon was meant to be a stepping stone towards the Zionist entity's wider plans in the region. The war was not just about Lebanon. It was meant to pit Lebanese Sunnis against Lebanese Shias, and, by extension, the Sunni nations against the lone Shia nation, that is, Iran, thereby facilitating Israel's planned attack on Iran. To Israel's chagrin, things have not quite worked out that way.

The Right Honourable Stephen Harper, M.P.
Prime Minister of Canada
Room 313S Centre Block
House of Commons
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6

Dear Prime Minister:

I call on you to immediately denounce the state of Israel with the same voice with which you denounce Hezbollah and Hamas. As president of the largest union in Ontario, representing over 200,000 workers in the public service, I ask that you stop supporting the heinous war crimes that Israel is committing against the people of Lebanon and Gaza.

The intentional bombing of infrastructure and civilian targets – which has already taken the lives of hundreds of men, women and this weekend another 37 young children, is criminal and violates all codes of international conflict and international law.

You have been complacent, and by extension have made the worldview of Canadians complacent, in taking the lives of innocent people and leaving the survivors without the bare necessities of life.

You have turned your back on Canada’s proud history as an honest broker of peace around the world. The proud history and tradition of Canada’s role as an international peacekeeper, begun by the Honourable Lester B. Pearson, has been made a laughing stock in the world.

Your unfettered support for the United States’ soft foreign policy on Israel has violated Canadian tradition and embarrassed many patriotic Canadians. Your “measured response” statement, delivered the day before eight Canadians were killed, has embarrassed many. Your lack of response and criticism to those deaths has embarrassed Canadians from coast to coast to coast.

Your blaming of the victims when Israel bombed a UN station is unconscionable. Canada lost a brave peacekeeper, a soldier who was upholding Canada’s marvelous tradition of peacekeeping, your silence in the face of his death is unacceptable – all other countries who lost citizens had the moral values and conviction to condemn Israel for this intentional hit on a peaceful observer station.

Your blind support for George Bush and his policies and your rejection of Canada’s traditional role in the world has left Canadians confused and angry.

You must call for an immediate cease-fire and a stop to the bombings by all parties. I urge you to take a strong leadership role, to reconsider the position you have taken, to be an active force in bringing peace to the Middle East, in saving the lives of hundreds more innocents, and in bringing Canada’s sense of fairness, social justice and peace to this critical situation.

Sincerely,

Patrick (Sid) Ryan
President, CUPE Ontario

webpage

BEIRUT, July 31 (Reuters) - France said on Monday that Iran was crucial to the stability of the Middle East and it was important to maintain contacts with Tehran as part of efforts to resolve the crisis in Lebanon.

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy described Iran as a significant, respected player in the Middle East which is playing a stabilising role.

. . .

Asked earlier in Beirut whether he would meet his Iranian counterpart, Douste-Blazy said: "It's normal that politicians who want a political agreement can meet each other."

. . .

"It was clear that we could never accept a destabilisation of Lebanon, which could lead to a destabilisation of the region," Douste-Blazy told a news conference in Beirut.

"In the region there is of course a country such as Iran -- a great country, a great people and a great civilisation which is respected and which plays a stabilising role in the region," he told a news conference.

It is very difficult to become an object of simultaneous hatred and contempt of the whole world, but Israel's armed forces have managed to do just that. My sincerest congratulations to all Zionists!

Israel's baffling attack on the UN outpost in Lebanon is a little less baffling after reading these two letters in today's Toronto Star:


The situation with the deliberate bombing on the UN outpost made me more than a little angry. There is no way possible that it was an accident. For one, Israel employs satellite-guided laser 500 lb. bombs. The co-ordinates for targets come down from the U.S. military satellite system. So any bomb that hits a specific target had those co-ordinates programmed in.

The media fail to mention that on June 8, 1967 the USS Liberty was attacked by aircraft and boats from the Israeli military. The Liberty was flying three U.S. flags — one a large flag. When the attack was finished, 34 U.S. sailors lay dead and 174 were wounded. Israel claimed it was a mistake, but the ship was an electronic ship listening to the chatter and picked up the fact that Israel was the aggressor nation.

So the bombing of the UN outpost fits into a nice history and Israel gets away with it.

Jim Trautman, Orton, Ont.


The UN observers in Lebanon were observing war crimes. So they had to be eliminated. Neither Israel nor Israel's biggest cheerleader, Canada's Prime Minister Harper, wanted them there. This is the other letter:


Are Stephen Harper and the Israeli ambassador to Canada trying to deflect serious concerns about the bombing of the unarmed UN observers in Lebanon by questioning why they were in a war zone? That is their job, Prime Minister, to be witnesses for the UN during a conflict. That is why they have a bunker, built to withstand 155mm artillery shells but not a heavier guided missile. That is the role of the UN mission there. Shame on you for questioning their integrity.

Capt. David Platt (ret'd), Toronto

The Toronto Star asked nine candidates for leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada two questions regarding the situation in Lebanon:

What would you have done differently than Prime Minister Stephen Harper?

If you were prime minister, what would you do now?

In my opinion, Gerard Kennedy's answers put him far ahead of the rest of the pack as a progressive:

Gerard Kennedy, former Ontario Liberal cabinet minister, said he would have reacted more quickly, both diplomatically and in getting Canadians out of Lebanon, adding, "Certainly, I don't think the Canadian government acted as quickly as other governments did.

"I believe that Canada should have been calling for a ceasefire, and we should have been doing that some time ago. We should be talking to all the responsible parties in the region ... It will be the cause of some regret that Canada did not exercise its good offices in this and people are dying on both sides of the border. It's not that we are a friend of Israel or a friend of Lebanon — we're a friend of peace."

Kennedy, too, is open to providing Canadian peacekeepers.

"If (Harper) has dismissed Canada's peacekeeping role, I think that's a mistake. And that's where I would differ with him. I think at some juncture there will be room for peacekeeping in this and Canada should stand ready, not just to respond, but to be part of the group, within the UN initiative. I don't think it should be left solely to the United States' initiative ... In some way, Prime Minister Harper has let down the parties in the Middle East and Canada by not exercising himself in this way (as a negotiator)."

I am neither a delegate nor a member of the Liberal Party. Had I been one, Gerard Kennedy would have been the clear choice for me.

Gerard Kennedy's leadership site

"When Serbia responded to an armed insurrection by the Kosovo Liberation Army with a military campaign that created Europe's worst humanitarian crisis in decades, no objective observer could deny that, notwithstanding Serbia's legitimate state interests, its response to the insurrection was entirely disproportionate to the threat. Not only did NATO have no problem condemning Serbia's aggression against Kosovo's ethnic Albanian population, but it bombed Belgrade to stop the military aggression."

Read more

MPP calls Israel 'rogue' state

You have been told that Iranian women are oppressed, that they cower in silence under a tyrannical and misogynist political system.

Well... I, for one, would definitely think twice before I try to oppress Iranian women who play rugby football:









The pictures are from a series of national tournaments in various sports currently being held in Iran. True, the women are dressed in an extremely modest manner, showing no "skin" whatsoever. In my opinion, only voyeurs and misogynists object to modest dress in women.

Humanity is very far from achieving equality for women, or for men for that matter. At the same time, the American propaganda about the situation of women in Iran is no more than the usual bunch of lies that are meant purely to serve American interests. Iranian women are no more or less oppressed than women in any other part of the world.


For good measure, here are a couple of pictures from an Iranian fashion show:

A member of Argentina's Arab community shows a tattoo of Iran's late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini during a protest rally in Buenos Aires against the Israeli attacks on Lebanon

According to a UPI report today:

Egypt's al-Gomhuriya [newspaper] commented the Palestinian cause has historically been instrumental in uniting Arab ranks in the struggle to liberate the Palestinians and Jerusalem from Israeli occupation. The semi-official daily said it was now time to once again reunite to save the Palestinians from the "daily massacres carried out in their ugliest forms before the eyes of the silent world that has been preoccupied with the personal American agenda." The mass-circulation daily's editorial warned that waiting for an American intervention to stop the "Israeli massacre against the Palestinian people" is "delusional due to the agreement between Washington and Tel Aviv's policies and objectives." This requires an immediate meeting of Arab leaders, it said, to work seriously to "use what elements of power and pressure cards they have left, not only to save Palestine, but to rejuvenate the diseased Arab body."

We will have to wait and see whether al-Gomhuriya's prescription for action by Arab governments will be put to practice. In the past, Arab governments have tended to act more like mice than men. (That was what Robert Fisk called Arabs a few years ago in a moment of anger at their apathy or inaction in the face of Israeli atrocities)

For the moment, Palestinian guerrillas have certainly been nothing less than lions (and lionesses). The capture of the two Israeli soldiers in Lebanon by the Hezbollah has not only helped strengthen the solidarity and resolve of the Palestinian nation, but it may help put pressure on Arab governments to take some real action against Israel. Israel thought it could wreak whatever havoc it wished on the boxed-in Gaza strip, on the pretext of freeing one soldier. With the capture of two Israeli soldiers in Lebanon and their removal to unknown distant locations, making it impossible to find them no matter how many bombs Israel drops on defencelesss Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, the pointless violence of the Israeli State will become clearer than ever for everyone to see.

Website of Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Update:

The statement by the British group Palestine Solidarity Campaign has so far garnered the signatures of the following public figures:

Ken Livingstone
John Pilger
Betty Hunter, Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Lord Eric Avebury
Lord Ian Gilmour
Prof Moshe Machover
Prof Avi Shlaim
Daniel Machover
Juliet Stevenson
Bella Freud
Ahdaf Soueif
Peter Kilfoyle MP
Clare Short MP
Derek Wyatt MP
Helen Goodman MP
Jeremy Corbyn MP
Paul Flynn MP
Frank Cook MP
John Austin MP
Hywel Williams MP
Mike Hancock MP
Mike Wood MP
Karma Nabulsi
Keith Sonnet UNISON Deputy General Secretary

Rev. Canon Garth Hewitt
Rev. Stephen Sizer

Majed Al Zeer
Andrew De La Tour
Tony Benn
Victoria Brittain
Baroness Jenny Tonge
Bruce Kent
Caryl Churchill
Charles Asprey
Corin Redgrave
Dr. Ghada Karmi
Gargi Bhattacharyya, Vice-President University and College Union (personal capacity)
Andy Bain President TSSA (personal capacity)
Baljeet Ghale NUT Senior Vice-President (personal capacity)
Prof Anthony Zahlan
Prof Hilary Rose
Prof Steven Rose
Ruqayyah Collector, NUS National Black Students Officer
Sacha Craddock
Steve Kemp NUM General Secretary
Susan Wooldridge

"Collective punishment is illegitimate and it does not have a smidgeon of intelligence. Where will the inhabitants of Beit Hanun run? With typical hardheartedness the military reporters say they were not "expelled" but that it was "recommended" they leave, for the benefit, of course, of those running for their lives. And what will this inhumane step lead to? Support for the Israeli government? Their enlistment as informants and collaborators for the Shin Bet? Can the miserable farmers of Beit Hanun and Beit Lahia do anything about the Qassam rocket-launching cells? Will bombing an already destroyed airport do anything to free the soldier or was it just to decorate the headlines?

"Did anyone think about what would have happened if Syrian planes had managed to down one of the Israeli planes that brazenly buzzed their president's palace? Would we have declared war on Syria? Another "legitimate war"? Will the blackout of Gaza bring down the Hamas government or cause the population to rally around it? And even if the Hamas government falls, as Washington wants, what will happen on the day after? These are questions for which nobody has any real answers. As usual here: Quiet, we're shooting. But this time we are not only shooting. We are bombing and shelling, darkening and destroying, imposing a siege and kidnapping like the worst of terrorists and nobody breaks the silence to ask, what the hell for, and according to what right?"

Read the full article

Click on the picture for a larger image.

From a letter by a Naftali Lavie in today's Toronto Star:

"As someone who has served in an Israeli tank unit near Kerem Shalom, I have nothing but sympathy for the bereaved families of Lieut. Hanan Barak and Sgt. Pavel Slutsker, killed in a daring Palestinian commando raid in which Corp. Gilad Shalit was taken captive. But some perspective and some context are necessary.

"This tank base was one of the locations from which Israel has been relentlessly shelling the Gaza Strip for several weeks. Further, just one day earlier, on Saturday, Israeli commandos had raided Rafah, in the Gaza Strip, and captured two brothers, Mustafa and Osama Mu'ammar. All of this is well-known, but did not make it to the front page. Can it be that Palestinian lives are nothing, Israeli lives everything?"

I am in a state far beyond anger and indignation. I think I can best describe it as emotional paralysis. Israeli monsters inflict whatever horrific suffering on the completely defenceless Palestinians that they feel like -- with complete impunity, without anyone, least of all the emasculated Arab governments, raising so much as a peep.

Speaking of swarms of locusts, here is Dubya's own armoured stretch limousine, flown in specially for his Vienna visit. It was a part of a convoy of sixty vehicles that hauled him around town.



And here is the man himself, disgracing himself as usual, this time after being told some truths about what the rest of the world thinks of him.



And here is the welcoming committee.

Have you noticed the strange disconnect between the environment movement and the animal rights movement? Neither side seems even to be aware of the other one, despite the fact that (a) animal life on this planet desperately needs the environment to be protected, to put a halt to the mass extinctions that are now all but inevitable; and (b) what is the "environment" that the environmentalists try to protect? Are animals, plants, and the planet's overall biodiversity not integral and inalienable parts of that "environment"?

Yet the environmentalist's sole focus seems to be on how climate change, pollution, and so on, will affect the planet's human population. Their proposed solutions are entirely focussed on trying to reduce or reverse the harm to human communities. One incredibly thoughtless form of this, for instance, is the holy of holies of the environmental movement, namely, alternative sources of energy, such as biofuel, solar energy, and so on. Presumably, vast areas of the planet are to be covered by biofuel-producing forests, by windfarms, and so on. No concern is being shown for the environmental destruction and havoc that such massive schemes would cause.

The animal rights movement, on the other side, seem more concerned about cute and cuddly animals than the other non-so-cuddly ones. The massive extinctions going on at this very moment among fish populations, for instance, seem to be of little concern to them.

Both groups, as with nearly all other activists working within the current socio-economic system, seem entirely obsessed with helping that very system (that very destructive system) to survive and thrive. The environmentalists want to enable the destructive current lifestyles to continue into the far future, albeit in modified forms. And the animal rights movement shows little concern for the systemic causes of the destruction affecting not just cute and cuddly animals, but all animals. They simply want to be able to go on enjoying cute and cuddly animals far into the future.

One of the most disturbing theories I have heard of has to do with the reason for the great diversity of animal life in Africa as opposed to the relative lack of diversity on the other continents. Because human life originated and evolved in Africa, the animals of that continent had the time and opportunity to adapt themselves to this new species. They learned to beware of the ruthless homo sapiens. Avoidance of this dangerous species became a part of the instinctual equipment of African animals.

Tens of thousands of years ago, the animal populations of the other continents were just as diverse as those of Africa. Around 70,000 years ago, a small population of humans left Africa and gradually multiplied and spread itself throughout the rest of the world. Everywhere they went, they destroyed for the sake of destroying, they killed for the sake of killing. The animal populations of Asia, Europe and the Americas were entirely unprepared for this new pestilence.

We are still nothing but a swarm of locusts.

International Philosophy

Washington’s war-mongers currently find themselves in a highly discredited position vis-à-vis Iran. Washington's lies have come back to haunt it. For months it has been beating the drums of war and “regime change,” proclaiming its holy mission to democratize an already democratic government (while its long-standing Mid-East friends and allies Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as well as its new friend Libya, continued to suffer extreme forms of political repression that countenance no opposition).

In the case of Iran, though, Washington was a perfectionist. Iran’s imperfect democracy had to go, and presumably be replaced by a dictatorship mindful of US interests. In reality, Washington was fearful that Iran’s independent political behaviour was setting a bad example for the rest of the Third World.

Washington took advantage of a manufactured nuclear crisis to cloak the nature of its actual concern. The United States, by far the most dangerous country in the world, with more invasions of foreign countries staining its history than one cares to think about, was concerned that Iran, one of the most peaceful countries in the world (it has not invaded a single country in over 250 years) was a danger to world peace. The irony is mind-boggling.

This week, the entire house of cards began to tumble down on the warmongers’ heads. There is nary a mention of “regime change” anymore. Suddenly, Washington finds no difficulty in dealing with the (imperfect) Iranian government, and has, in fact, offered to supply US nuclear know-how in exchange for Iran’s acceptance of highly watered-down conditions. Suddenly, Iran is no longer a nuclear threat, even though nothing has changed on the ground.

Washington, having begun from a position where “all options were on the table,” to quote Condi’s favourite threat, now has nothing left on the table! It has been stripped bare of the last shred of credibility it may still have possessed.

Still, the game’s loser will no doubt try to pretend to have won the game. Washington’s “subtle diplomacy” will be eulogized all around, as if there had been anything subtle about its threats to rain down nuclear missiles on an essentially defenceless nation.

In reality, the prize for diplomatic subtlety should unquestionably go to the government of President Ahmadinejad of Iran. Tehran’s honest dealing finally forced Washington to abandon its sham “diplomacy.” It may not be an exaggeration to say that Tehran has founded a new kind of diplomacy, that is, a diplomacy of telling the whole truth and remaining steadfastly attached to one’s principles, as opposed to what diplomacy has come to mean –- telling advantageous lies. It is also a diplomacy based on peaceful intentions, as opposed to the usual kind of diplomacy, where the threat of initiating warfare in case things do not proceed to one’s liking is always retained in the background.

The metaphor of “carrots and stick” has been used to describe the diplomatic game plan of the Big Six Powers in relation to Iran. In the end, though, Bush, Hugo Chavez’s donkey, finds himself eating the carrots while beating himself over the head with the stick.

It's so good to be an obedient servant of Washington. The tyrannical Shah of Iran, who recognized no master except Washington, was literally the American nuclear industry's poster boy. This is an ad the nuclear industry ran in the 1970s to promote nuclear energy in the US.


With thanks to Rostam Pourzal

The American Massacre at My Lai, Vietnam, 1968

The American Massacre at Haditha, Iraq, 2006

In case you have been wondering whether anyone will be punished for the Haditha massacre (and the other massacres in Iraq), I would remind you that out of the 26 military personnel originally charged for the far larger massacre at My Lai, only one man, Lt. William Calley, was ever "punished." His punishment? Three and a half years of house arrest!

"Sometimes things happen that shouldn't happen!"

Capitalism in action

As part of the damage-control plan following the revelation of the Haditha massacres, US "soldiers" (who are usually referred to by an epithet in this blog) are to get ethics training. A natural question to ask is: Shouldn't they have received ethics training three years ago? Shouldn't they have received ethics training prior to being sent to Iraq? Shouldn't they have been told long ago that their job was not to kill every "towel-head" that entered the sights of their accursed guns?

Today, as if the US military didn't have enough of a job on its hands with Haditha's damage control, evidence of another massacre has surfaced, this time at the town of Ishaqi, which proves, if any proof were needed, the futility of trying to teach ethics to individuals who don't already know it is wrong to shoot small children.

I have often cursed the media for their supine attitude. In my last post, I wondered why reporters don't ask themselves this logical question: If an atrocity has been revealed only on the basis of an accidental disclosure, doesn't that mean there have likely been a lot of other similar atrocities?

Now I pose another question. What sort of sense is there in having Americans try to impose peace and democracy in the world? The United States is a nation whose ruling class counts on a "morality" of "might is right" to preserve its own power and its empire, and counts on forcing children to grow up to worship guns and killing so they will make docile and willing cannon fodder for its wars. If any nation needs to be saved from itself and the tyranny and immorality of its ruling class, surely that nation is the United States of America.

Update: Iraq rejects US probe clearing troops of killings

This case is by no means unique, or even rare. Far from it. Tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi women, men and children have been murdered by uniformed and non-uniformed American thugs and murderers, usually referred to as "soldiers" and "security contractors." Hundreds of thousands of others have been maimed for life. The only difference this time was that the cover-up and the suppression of evidence failed.

Logic tells us that if Abu Ghraib was revealed only through the accident of the publication of some unauthorized pictures, and Haditha was revealed through the accident of the failure of a cover-up, then there must have been many other Abu Ghraibs where no unauthorized pictures were taken, and many other Hadithas where the perpetrators were more skillful in covering their tracks. The members of the "embedded" newsmedia never seem of think of this logic.

Other than Haditha, only a single case is pending against the Marines. It involves last July’s killing in cold blood of the cousin of Iraq’s Ambassador to the United Nations. Do you see the pattern here? Ambassador Samir al-Sumaidaie had sufficient influence to force an investigation, although no results have been announced yet. That killing drew attention and got investigated simply because it happened to involve an ambassador’s cousin. Should the newsmedia not be asking themselves whether there have been other killings that did not accidentally involve relatives of ambassadors and other powerful individuals? Would it not be a logically inescapable conclusion that there have been many other such killings?

Before dismissing the argument as speculation, read the following Reuters story by Michael Georgy:

BAGHDAD, May 28 (Reuters) - Word that U.S. Marines may have killed two dozen Iraqi civilians in "cold-blooded" revenge after an insurgent attack has shocked Americans but many Iraqis shrug it off as an every day fact of life under occupation.

Despite U.S. military denials, many Iraqis believe killing of men, women and children at the hands of careless or angry American soldiers is common. No reliable statistics are available.

Since U.S. officials said last week that charges including murder were possible after an investigation into the deaths at Haditha last November, Iraqi media and politicians have paid scant attention to details leaking out in Washington...

Leaders of the Sunni minority are more critical but say the Haditha incident is only part of a pattern of U.S. behaviour in the Sunni heartlands north and west of Baghdad: "The American soldier has become an expert in killing," said Abdel Salam al- Qubaisy, spokesman for the Sunni Muslim Scholars Association...

In Baghdad's bustling Karrada commercial district, Mohammed Jawdaat, 47, offered a typical view at his store, where business selling firefighting gear is booming amid the chaos of Baghdad:

"It really doesn't surprise me," he said.

Like many in the city, he can recount an incident in which he says he saw U.S. forces open fire on civilians: "Six months ago a car pulled out of a street towards an American convoy and a soldier just opened fire," Jawdaat said.

"The driver was shot in the head and the person behind was killed too. They were innocents. There were no warning shots and the Americans didn't even stop. The police took the wounded." ...

Imad Mohammed, a teenager selling newspapers at a Baghdad intersection, said he had not seen Haditha on any front page and said it simply was not news: "The Americans see a Muslim go into a mosque and just assume he is a terrorist.

"They either arrest him or blow it up."

A more detailed account

Today's Hitlers walking the red carpet

By Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service News Agency

WASHINGTON, May 24 (IPS) - Iran offered in 2003 to accept peace with Israel and cut off material assistance to Palestinian armed groups and to pressure them to halt terrorist attacks within Israel's 1967 borders, according to the secret Iranian proposal to the United States.

The two-page proposal for a broad Iran-U.S. agreement covering all the issues separating the two countries, a copy of which was obtained by IPS, was conveyed to the United States in late April or early May 2003. Trita Parsi, a specialist on Iranian foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies who provided the document to IPS, says he got it from an Iranian official earlier this year but is not at liberty to reveal the source.

The two-page document contradicts the official line of the George W. Bush administration that Iran is committed to the destruction of Israel and the sponsorship of terrorism in the region.

Parsi says the document is a summary of an even more detailed Iranian negotiating proposal which he learned about in 2003 from the U.S. intermediary who carried it to the State Department on behalf of the Swiss Embassy in late April or early May 2003. The intermediary has not yet agreed to be identified, according to Parsi.

The Iranian negotiating proposal indicated clearly that Iran was prepared to give up its role as a supporter of armed groups in the region in return for a larger bargain with the United States. What the Iranians wanted in return, as suggested by the document itself as well as expert observers of Iranian policy, was an end to U.S. hostility and recognition of Iran as a legitimate power in the region.

Read more

With thanks to Juan Cole

A native protester showing his feelings about the "offerings" of bread and cheese left by the White settlers after weeks of humiliating the protesters.

Solidarity Links

From today's headlines:

Bush Says Iraqi Government Formation a `Watershed'

Bush Says Progress in Iraq 'Incremental'


According to the latest report, Dubya's speechwriters are still explaining to him what "incremental" and "watershed" mean.

Hugo Chavez says it all! Americans have a lot to answer for.

This is not a joke:

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libya wants to work with the United States to spread democracy around the world after Washington restored full diplomatic ties with Tripoli, the head of Libya's de facto single ruling party said on Monday.

"We encourage America on the path of cooperation and we hope we will cooperate together through cultural debate to spread democracy around the world together," Mustapha Zaidi, the top official of Libya's Revolutionary Committees, said.

The United States Government has just restored normal relations with Libya. By implication, Libya's Muammar al-Gaddafi, having kowtowed to Washington's diktat in every possible way since the big scare he got from Saddam's overthrow, has just been anointed a democratic leader. And he will be "working with the United States to spread democracy"!

I wonder what Gaddafi's concept of "democracy" is. More importantly, I wonder what Washington's concept of democracy is. On one hand, it sees nothing wrong with granting an imprimatur of approval to the 35-year-old dictatorship of Gaddafi. On the other hand, it contemplates forcible "regime change" in democratic Iran, and continues to victimize the democratically-elected government of Palestine...

... if only...

Dubya's "popularity" has dropped into the 20s range. Only three other US Presidents, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and Harry Truman, have ever achieved this particular distinction.

According to reports, Bush has been "briefed" on the content of the letter. In other words, he will not (be allowed to) read it. I think it is important that as many other people as possible do read it, both because of the alternative perspective that it presents, and also because the "news" media have already told a lot of lies about what it says.

President Ahmadinejad welcomed to Indonesia during his current visit

John Bolton, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, in a recent speech addressed to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, asserted: "Rest assured that we are not relying on the Security Council as the only tool in our toolbox." He then gleefully rose up and down on his toes, very pleased with himself for the threat he had just made against Iran (music to the ears of his audience), and literally gave an evil smile.

Compare Bolton's belligerence with the calm manner of Javad Zarif, Iran's Ambassador to the United Nations [the links are given below].

The comparison leaves no doubt in my mind that the current US Administration remains by far the greatest threat to peace and stability in the world.

By the way, isn't John Bolton, in the statement quoted above, actually saying that the United States Government doesn't give a damn about the UN Security Council? Then why is it that when President Ahmadinejad of Iran made a similar remark a few days ago, it was quoted everywhere in the Western press, while Bolton's statement was not even mentioned?

Javad Zarif's enlightening interview, where he calmly clarifies every aspect of the current situation, is here. It is 46 minutes in length.

John Bolton's statement is included in this newscast. The part of the newscast about Iran is 9 minutes long.

What follows is a full, accurate, and word-for-word translation of the text of President Ahmadinejad’s address at Al-Qods [Jerusalem] International Conference, Tehran, April 14, 2006. I ask the reader to put all preconceptions aside, and to read what he actually says.

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate

Dear Scholars and Thinkers; Honorable Speakers and Members of Parliament, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Peace and God’s mercy and blessings be upon you,

On behalf of our beloved people and the government of the Islamic Republic, I would like to welcome you and express my own thanks and appreciation for your attendance. I hope your blessed and fruitful presence at this conference will help ease the inconvenience of your journey from countries far and near.

Fortunately, this conference coincides with the anniversary of the birth of Islam’s glorious Prophet, which is an auspicious concurrence.

The Prophet of Islam is the messenger of compassion, mercy, justice and human dignity. He is the focus of the unity of all believers in God and all Muslims, and the harbinger of peace and harmony on the basis of justice and faith in God. Our beloved prophet desired the welfare of all humanity, was the pinnacle of human perfection, and the inheritor of all divine prophets. I offer my felicitations on the occasion of the anniversary of this auspicious birth to the honourable participants, to all Muslims and to all humanity.

Excellencies, Dear sisters and brothers;

The question of Palestine has been a tribulation for the people of the region and the Islamic community for the past sixty years. The suffering inflicted by the Zionist occupiers upon the people of the region, Muslims and especially the Palestinian people, is a gnawing torment that cannot easily be redressed, and I would like to give a brief account of it here:

Permanent Threat

The existence of the [Zionist] regime is tantamount to the permanent imposition of an unbridled threat, so that none of the Islamic nations and countries of the region can feel secure from its threat. The closer these countries and nations are to the epicenter of this threat, the more insecure they feel. The people of Palestine exist within the context of such a threat. For that reason, they have not spent even a single day with peace of mind and tranquility for at least the past sixty years. Three generations of the children of Palestine have lived and are presently living under these circumstances. The peoples of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and the entire Middle East are essentially in a similar situation.

Waste of the Immense Resources of the Region and the Islamic Community

As a result of the presence of the usurper Zionist regime, an enormous portion of the wealth and assets of the Islamic countries and the region are spent on maintaining defensive strength, and at times on actual defense. In addition, an important part of the human resources, which are the most fundamental assets of any nation, have been expended for the same purpose.

Insult to the Dignity of the Faithful and Believers

The existence of such a threat has tainted the dignity of the Islamic community, the believers, and the faithful. In accordance with the noble verse [from the Qur’an], “God has never opened a path for unbelievers to dominate believers,” the domination of such a regime over the portion of Muslims and believers that reside in the occupied territories and the region is contrary to the will of the Almighty.

By its unending murders and massacres, destruction of homes and farms, desecration of sacred shrines, mosques and churches, unrelenting invasion of residential and non-residential places, planned and announced assassinations, [the Zionist regime] tramples not only on the dignity of Palestinians, but also on the dignity of all Muslims and freedom-loving people of the world.

How long can this situation last and be tolerated? When Imam Ali, Commander of the Faithful [599-661 AD], heard that invading enemies had forcibly removed an anklet from the feet of a Jewish woman in one of the frontier cities under his rule, he said: "One should not blame a man who dies from grief over such an outrage.”

Today, they show no mercy even to children, and target them with their bullets. Palestinian men and women are abducted and tortured in their fearsome prisons. People are shot dead on the streets, at markets, and in schools. Do such scenes befit the dignity and pride of Islam and humanity?

Sowing disunity in the Islamic world and among the nations of the region

Sowing disunity among the nations and governments of the region is the foundation of the continued existence of this usurper regime. By their insidious interference and by creating an atmosphere of mistrust and resentment, they divide the countries and governments of the region, so that in this atmosphere and by setting up certain covert relationships, they make possible the imposition of costly military and economic pacts, along with the disgraceful political burdens of the dominant system on the nations and governments of the region. The Zionist regime is the focus of accord for the bullying countries and the adversaries of the Islamic community, and an adversary of Muslims. Enemies and ill-wishers, by strengthening and supporting such a threat, put effective pressure on the Islamic community and the countries and nations of the region, and, despite their deep and numerous differences, they converge and are united at this single point.

In fact, all of the dominant powers impose their power on Muslims through the regime that occupies Jerusalem; and that regime, as their agent, has assumed the responsibility to terrorize, threaten, sow disunity, and sabotage the political, economic and cultural relations between the countries of the region with each other and with other countries of the world.

Preventing the Progress and Advancement of the Islamic Countries

The bullying powers use various excuses to prevent the transfer of science, technology and progress to the nations of the region, and regard [our advancement] as a threat to the corrupt Zionist regime. They do not allow the countries of the region to tread on the path to progress and advancement. They even oppose indigenous technologies in the Islamic countries, and interpret any scientific advancement as a threat to the security of the regime that occupies Jerusalem.

Do you see how they treat our nation that, relying on the creativity of its own scientists, has been able to achieve access to nuclear technology? Whereas today, nuclear technology is one of the primary foundations for progress and serving the people; and in the not too distant future, nations lacking this technology will have no choice but to resort to it in order to provide their energy needs, as well as to use nuclear technology in scientific, technical, and manufacturing fields.

Affronts against Sanctities and Destruction of Cultural Heritage

The desecration of the al-Aqsa Mosque [in Jerusalem] and the demographic and physical alterations in Jerusalem and the al-Aqsa Mosque that are revered by all believers and the followers of all monotheistic religions are the consequences of the Zionist occupation, which has devastated this monotheistic institution, and has ruined this precious heritage of humanity.

The Exile of the Innocent Palestinians

Today, the exile of millions of Palestinians from their fatherland is a pain and brutality whose dimensions are indescribable.

Excellencies; distinguished parliamentarians; dear sisters and brothers;

What I briefly referred to are some of the consequences of the continuation of such an artificial regime. The question is: What is the philosophy behind the establishment and imposition of such a regime by certain Western powers?

Some Western powers believe that during the Second World War they killed a large number of Jewish people, and that they founded the occupying regime in order to atone for such a tragedy.

With reverence towards all ethnicities, nations, and followers of divine religions, our question is this: If such a tragedy is true, why should it be atoned for in Islamic countries, at the expense of the people of this region, through the occupation of Palestinian lands and the unending repression of Palestinian people, the exile of millions of Palestinians, the destruction of their cities, villages, and farms, and with fire, bullets, and force?

Is the tragedy of the establishment of such a regime less of a tragedy than the Holocaust that you have claimed? If there are serious doubts regarding the Holocaust, there is no doubt regarding the Palestinian tragedy and Holocaust.

The Holocaust in Palestine has persisted for more than sixty years.

Excellencies, dear sisters and brothers;

The bitter truth is that, for the last several decades, a widespread network of Zionists, aiming at domination and mastery, has enlisted the services of the bullying and powerful governments, and certain weaker governments in the West have succumbed to the Zionists.

Today, it is not only the Palestinians and the Islamic world that are affected by the threat of Zionism, but also a huge part of the economic and political interests of the people in the West are hostage to the Zionists.

I regret to affirm that the governments under the influence of the Zionists in some European countries, for the sake of consolidating the pillars of their power, are prepared to make the financial, industrial and agricultural resources and key posts of their countries available to them, and to sacrifice the freedom, dignity and honour of their citizens under the feet of the Zionists. There is much to say regarding this matter that, God willing, I will share with all nations, and especially the people of Europe, in due course.

The question of Palestine is not solely a question for the Islamic world, but rather today’s issue for humanity. The tragedy of the occupation in Palestine and daily atrocities have harmed the dignity and honour of humanity.

Can a high-minded person condone what is happening in the occupied territories? So many Palestinians have passed away yearning for return to their homes, and so many Palestinian children live with the dream of returning to Palestine, and hope to return to the homes of their fathers.

What is the remedy, and what is the solution?

Excellencies; dear sisters and brothers;

Peace and harmony can only be based on belief in God, protection of human dignity, and justice.

Oppression and aggression are not compatible with belief in God, human dignity and justice. The Zionist regime is a clear example of oppression, and its fundamental nature represents an actual and permanent threat. Its establishment was for this very purpose, namely to put in place a permanent threat in the region. Therefore, its continued existence is a continuation of threat and oppression, and would not exist without threat and aggression, and is not inherently able to survive in an atmosphere of peace and tranquility. Such a regime, even if it remains established in one square meter of the land of Palestine, will continue to be a threat.

Take a good look at the bullying powers of the world. When it comes to supporting the Zionist regime, they recognize no red line and boundaries for justice, human rights and human dignity. The usurper Zionist regime is the point of convergence of all of the corruption and injustices of the corrupt and bullying powers.

Only a popular democratic government can resolve the problem of Palestine and the people of the region. The right to govern belongs to all the people of Palestine, and it is they who must decide their form of government and elect their own officials. For this purpose, there must be an opportunity for all people of Palestinian heritage, whether Muslims, Christians, or Jews, residing within Palestine or in exile in other countries, to participate in a free referendum to decide their form of government and their leaders. In other words, the only wise and rational path that is compatible with the recognized international norms is to hold a referendum with the participation of all people of Palestinian heritage.

The supporters of the Zionist regime are silent in the face of this powerful logic.

I tell them that regardless of what they desire or do not desire, the Zionist regime is falling apart.

The young tree of resistance in Palestine is blooming, and the blossoms of faith and desire for freedom are bearing fruit. The Zionist regime is a decaying and crumbling tree that will break up with a storm. Today even the immigrants inhabiting occupied Palestine, especially the African and Asian immigrants, live in misery and poverty, and discontent.

I tell the governments supporting the Zionist regime:

Open the doors to the prison of occupied Palestine, and allow the immigrants to return to their original homes, and summon the usurpers of the land of Palestine as well. Of course, if you still consider yourself indebted to them, then find a proper place for them in your own territories; otherwise, call upon them to return to their countries of origin to live like their forefathers.

Ladies and Gentlemen;

Today we are all accountable in facing the question of Palestine. The enemies of humanity are struggling to preserve this nest of intrigue. They are using the resources and wealth of their own people to keep such a regime in power, at the expense of the poverty and destitution of their own nations.

With the grace of the Almighty, today the nations of the world, especially the Muslim nations, are awake and are the greatest bulwark of the people of Palestine in the struggle against the Zionist usurpers.

Islamic governments can solve the problem of Palestine by their unity and solidarity.

The parliaments of countries can play an important role in awakening and forging unity among nations by placing the question of Palestine in their permanent agenda.

The question of Palestine is the present and lasting concern of not only Muslims, but the entire humanity.

Palestine is the point of convergence and differentiation of right and wrong. The freedom of Palestine is the present aspiration of humanity. We must believe that good will prevail and evil will depart. We must believe that Palestine will soon be free.

A regime based on injustice and threats cannot survive. Today all the necessary conditions for the freedom of Palestine are on hand and available. Vigilance, unity and resistance are the keys to victory.

The destiny of the region will be decided in the land of Jerusalem, and it will be a great honour to share in the victory of Palestine.

I pray to the Almighty for the honour and strength of the Islamic community and the victory of the Palestinian people.

Once again I offer my congratulations on the auspicious birth of our dear Prophet, and thank the organizers of this conference.

I thank all the dear guests and brothers and sisters for their attendance, and hope the results of this conference will be a long step forward in realizing the noble Palestinian cause.

"[Canadian] Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay spoke of a mysterious 'chemistry' with Condoleezza Rice, invited her for a skate on the Rideau Canal and gushed his longtime admiration from the podium as the secretary of state fixed her gaze on some point on a distant wall." (From today's Toronto Star)

The Star's catoonists are probably working on an appropriate cartoon right now, with a bit part played by Belinda Stronach. What about calling him "Canada's Minister of Affairs"?

So you think the US Government's rhetoric against Iran is about enrichment of Uranium? Brazil has been quietly doing the same thing as Iran, with no criticism forthcoming from the Bush Administration. In fact, the US has done its utmost to hush up the Brazilian efforts, and to insist that they are about peaceful use of nuclear energy.

In reality, the parallel between Iran and Brazil is exact and unmistakable, except in the minds of the fanatical ideologues in Washington, who would use any excuse to further their geopolitical ambitions in the Middle East. Both Iran and Brazil have opted for independence from the Empire, so that they would not have to rely on the major capitalist nations to supply the nuclear fuel for their vital energy needs.

... a change in the lunacy that has passed for American foreign and domestic policy for more than fifty years. The speech by Dr Ron Paul (Republican member of the US House of Representatives from Texas) eloquently summarizes both what is wrong and what is immoral about nearly everything that the United States of America has represented since the Second World War. As he demonstrates, those wrong and immoral policies have led to the current entanglement with Iran, as well as to the nightmarish quagmire of Iraq.

The lunacy threatens to culminate in a catastrophe of world-historical proportions in the form of an attack against Iran. It is indeed time for regime change -- in the United States.

The speech is about forty minutes long, but it provides information that is of vital interest to every American -- and which is denied to Americans by their supine newsmedia.

The full text is here.

The US government knows, as well as anyone, that Iran does not have a nuclear bomb program. Ironically, one implication of that knowledge is that if the US does attack Iran’s nuclear research sites, it would do so with tactical nuclear weapons.

The potential attack would be for the purpose of "regime change," and would have nothing to do with Iran’s supposed nuclear ambitions. It would be for purely geopolitical reasons, as the Empire cannot afford to have a government in place at the very hub of its geopolitical interests that has more consistently than any government in recent history defied its ideological hegemony.

An attack on Iran would also arise from a full coincidence of "vital" interests between the US and Israel. Iran is the "anti-Israel." Not in the sense falsely portrayed in the media, in which Iran supposedly has designs to "wipe Israel off the map.” Rather, with Israel, a creature of colonialism and imperialism, representing an ever-present hindrance to political progress and stability in the Middle East, Iran represents the only political progress that the region has seen in over half a century.

One of the biggest mistakes of the War on Iraq was attacking on the basis of a lie that could later be proved to have been a lie, namely, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Presumably, the US government plans not to repeat the mistake in the case of Iran. By using nuclear weapons against Iran, the US can continue to claim that Iran did have a nuclear weapons program, and that all the evidence of its existence was regrettably obliterated in the attack on the program facilities themselves.

Clever, those guys! Gives a whole new meaning to "tactical nuclear weapons"!

• My other posts on related topics:
"Pressure and threats do not resolve problems"
The silver lining... Sweet fruits of deception
Myth and Myth-take (with Update)
The Poodle's UNcle
Pacifism vs Imperialism
Wiped out...
"Democracy in Action"
Boundless Arrogance II
What do you care?
Unity, progress, and purpose
Real friends of Palestinians
New Age Zionists

Apropos the current American war against the rest of the world and the immediate plans to direct the war machine towards Iran, I'll say a couple of words in a minute about an old movie I saw tonight for the first time. Meanwhile, the words of Javad Zarif, Iran's Ambassador to the United Nations, make eminent sense. He is wrong only about one thing. He says Iran has not invaded another country in 250 years. Actually, it is more like 268 years (since its invasion of India in 1738).

The movie was "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid," with James Coburn, Kris Kristofferson, Bob Dylan (!) and a bunch of relative unknowns. I am more the French and Italian subtitled-movie type (though I do confess to liking Westerns), but we thought we'd go see something different this time, and, boy, was it ever different! The violence was gratuitous and senseless (and the sex was prostitution and rape). It was like a microcosm or metaphor of American violence in Iraq. In the movie, everyone ended up dead. That seems to be America's plan for the world at large.

• My other posts on related topics:
The silver lining... Sweet fruits of deception
Myth and Myth-take (with Update)
The Poodle's UNcle
Pacifism vs Imperialism
Wiped out...
"Democracy in Action"
Boundless Arrogance II
What do you care?
Unity, progress, and purpose

This post's title comes from a wonderful article by Israeli Nobel Peace Prize candidate Jeff Halper. He proposes a thought-provoking analogy between Gandhi's non-cooperation movement in colonial India and the Palestinian people's election of the non-cooperating Hamas.

According to my Internet search, only a single newspaper in the world -- The Toronto Star -- has dared to publish this article.

The saga of the four Christian peace activists taken hostage by the Iraqi Resistance several months ago, one of whom was killed by the captors, and three of whom were recently “rescued” by “coalition” forces under highly suspicious and mysterious circumstances, is a study in the interconnections and the complicity between imperialist propaganda and media distortions.

The media expect the former captives to be grateful to the “coalition” forces. What, exactly, are they to be grateful for? Are they supposed to be grateful to the ultimate causes and creators of their suffering, not to speak of the suffering of millions of Iraqis?

The media have offered a false paradox: Opponents of war have been freed by soldiers. But there is no paradox here. As long as there are wars, there will be active opponents of war, who themselves are more likely than the average non-participant to become a victim of war. Hence providing an opportunity for the warmongers to “rescue” them and try to justify the unjustifiable. Had there been no war on Iraq, would any of this have happened?

The peace activists have been urged to thank their “rescuers.” Rather, it should be the “rescuers” who should apologize to the former hostages for having made it necessary for them to place themselves in such a highly dangerous situation, for having endured months of captivity, and for being forced to waste so much energy opposing a worthless war which is a tissue of mendacity and falsehood.

Ultimately, it is the newsmedia who should be apologizing for having perverted the meaning of the four’s mission of peace into a justification for war.

• My other posts on related topics:
The silver lining... Sweet fruits of deception
Wiped out...
"Democracy in Action"
Boundless Arrogance II
What do you care?
Unity, progress, and purpose
The Poodle's UNcle
Intolerance masquerades as tolerance
Truth as a higher degree of deception
Myth and Myth-take (with Update)
McCain's License to Torture?
Commandress in Chief
Opportunism, thy name is Dubya!

From a letter I sent to a local newspaper:

Re: Editorial: Palestinian Anarchy

The editorial accuses Palestinians of wanting to turn themselves into pariahs for electing Hamas. What Palestinians have actually done has been to exercise their democratic right to choose the government that they feel best represents their interests. I don’t recall The Star accusing Americans of wanting to turn themselves into pariahs by electing and then re-electing someone like George W. Bush.

As further evidence that Palestinians enjoy the pariah status, you claim that their brief detention of 11 foreign aid workers after Israel’s criminal raid on the Jericho prison proves they don’t favour their friends over their foes. Thus implying, apparently, that Hamas is their foe.

Incidentally, had a representative of an international organization been held hostage by a hypothetical Canadian militant group (as, in a sense, actually happened with the FLQ abduction of James Cross in 1970), would The Star have accused all Canadians of wanting to turn themselves into pariahs, and not knowing their friends from their enemies?

The Palestinian people’s friends are those who understand their plight. That includes many of those same foreign workers, such as the released Canadian detainee Adam Budzanowski, who are working among them, and who understand the risks that they take by working among a highly oppressed and abandoned nation. That is why Mr Budzanowski has decided to remain in Palestine to continue his work.

Hamas is also a friend of the Palestinian people, because it understands that without justice there will be no peace. To Palestinians, Hamas represents exactly that justice. Hamas represents the demand for full withdrawal of Israel from the occupied territories. Nothing less, and nothing more. No other influential group within Palestine, and no Western nation, is willing to make that demand an absolute condition for peace.

• My other posts on related topics:
The silver lining... Sweet fruits of deception
Wiped out...
"Democracy in Action"
New Age Zionists
Myth and Myth-take (with Update)
Unity, progress, and purpose

...but only if you can stand the sight of Bill O'Reilly for as long as eight minutes. Ole Phil gives him a thrashing he won't soon forget: Video

The sky is a little brighter today. It has been so dark, getting ever darker all the time, that we have almost forgotten what light looks like. We have even become accustomed to think of ourselves as moles, hopelessly and helplessly burrowing ever deeper into the dark abyss, hoping that turning away from reality would save us from the knowledge – the dark awareness – of the engulfing gloom.

Blinded by the darkness that has been, in a way, of our own making, we have failed to perceive the constellations and patterns of the positive side-effects of Bush’s complete reduction of politics to the art of lying and crime. We have been so busy grieving over Bush’s lies and crimes that we have almost forgotten our older grief, the one over the mendacity and criminality that are the essence of the system.

Lo and behold, the fog is lifting, in more than one place and in more than one way.

We have always thought of politics as a dirty game. We have thought of politicians as amoral individuals whose mendacity was only restrained by their sense of the expedient, whose amorality was controlled by their pragmatism. Even so, an all-encompassing world of lies and crime presupposed that truth and morality existed – if not here, at least somewhere, if not now, at least sometime.

The Bush Administration’s quite open abandonment of truth and morality has awakened people to the systemic nature of mendacity and crime. It has awakened a new thoroughgoing critical attitude towards the socioeconomic system of capitalism and the political system of imperialism. People have begun to realize that the system is false through and through.

Many recent events have helped reveal the actual nature of many phenomena hitherto obscured by ideological fogs of imperialism and capitalism. People have become more willing to call a spade a spade, and to see a lie for what it is, without resorting to euphemisms such as “misrepresentation” or “mistaken judgement.”

Just to concentrate on the Middle East:

Zionism has been revealed as an integral part of the battle against Moslem peoples, rather than just a local nuisance for Palestinians. It is becoming ever clearer that the Holocaust was used as an excuse to establish the Zionist state. Had there been no Holocaust or Jewish persecution, some other entity, by this name or some other name, would in any case have been installed in the region to facilitate imperialist destabilization and domination of the region.

It has become clear that Israel has no intention of ever leaving the occupied territories, a fact that has led to Hamas’ election. Hamas is the Palestinian equivalent and counterpart of the absolute intransigence on the part of Israel.

It is becoming ever more obvious that the Iraqi “government” is not a bunch of “democrats” trying to make the best of a bad situation, but rather collaborators with the occupying power, pure and simple. Their project is merely to facilitate the occupier’s plans.

Had the American project in the Middle East had anything to do with spreading democracy, it would not have been such a steadfast enemy of the only two democratically-elected Moslem governments in the region - Iran and the Palestinian Authority. The puppet Iraqi government is not democratic. The war on Iraq was merely a manifestation of the long-term neo-colonial project of destabilization and control of the region. In that sense, it has been a great success.

Writers such as Salman Rushdie and Irshad Manji have been exposed as enemies of Moslem peoples, rather than as advocates of freedom of expression and “progressive Islam.”

Most importantly, the Islamic resurgence of the last few decades has been revealed as a political movement against imperialism, rather than an atavistic pathology.

• My other posts on related topics:
Myth and Myth-take (with Update)
The Poodle's UNcle
Wiped out...
"Democracy in Action"
Boundless Arrogance II
What do you care?
Unity, progress, and purpose
New Age Zionists
Intolerance masquerades as tolerance
Truth as a higher degree of deception
McCain's License to Torture?
Commandress in Chief
Opportunism, thy name is Dubya!

People have tried to figure out why Bush seems so uncaring about the death and suffering he has caused in Iraq. I think it is actually very simple. The thing about Bush is that he believes everyone's life is as miserable, destructive, and meaningless as his own. He thinks a lot of people are better off dead.

That is why the tens of thousands of Iraqi lives and the thousands of American lives that he has extinguished mean nothing to him. Bush saves people, especially young people, from life! His victims find eternal meaning by making "the ultimate sacrifice"!

He is Moloch, the god-king in whose name children were sacrificed on a pyre to make them "immortal." "Moloch finds particular pleasure in making mothers weep; for he specializes in stealing their children."

Dubya’s popularity, according to the latest poll, stands at 34 percent. Considering that he got 47 percent of the vote a little over a year ago, his popularity has dropped by only about 13 percent during the intervening period.*

All the unprecedented domestic and international disasters of those 14 months have convinced only an additional 13 percent of the American population that this man was never meant to be the leader of anything, much less the leader of the most powerful military power in the world! What will it take to convince the remaining 34 percent?

This is not a rhetorical question. I am really curious to know...

* I am being generous, by the way, with that "47 percent" figure. The real figure, considering all the fraud that went on in Ohio and elsewhere, was probably more like 45 percent, or even lower.

Ken “Red Ken” Livingstone, the mayor of London, has been suspended from his job for one month for telling it like it is, which has always been his way.

For readers who may not know who Ken Livingstone is, I’ll briefly say that he is what a politician should be, but most politicians are definitely not. He sees politics not as a means to advance the interests of oneself or one’s own class, but rather as a way to make this a better world. This assertion should, on one level, be the obvious job description of a politician, but, on another level, admittedly makes the speaker sound naively out-of-touch with “the real world.” The fact that the politician's obvious job description should appear so unrealistic is itself a clear indication of how thoroughly corrupt most politics is.

The event that has got Ken into hot water with the British Establishment happened when a reporter from the Evening Standard accosted him while he was leaving a party for a gay politician. The Evening Standard, which Ken has described as “a load of scumbags and reactionary bigots,” has been a bitter opponent of Ken Livingstone in every possible way.

When the reporter identified the paper he works for, Livingstone, not knowing anything about the reporter, said “What did you do? Were you a German war criminal?” which is something along the lines of what I might have said had I been in Ken’s shoes. What else can one say to a person who has deliberately chosen to work for a reactionary rag?

The reporter said he was Jewish and therefore found the remark offensive. Livingstone again said what I might have said in his place. He compared the reporter to a “concentration camp guard – you are just doing it because you are paid to.” Wasn’t he right? What was a Jew, supposedly a member of a highly-persecuted minority, doing working for "a load of scumbags and reactionary bigots"? More importantly, shouldn’t we all question who and what we work for?

As Ken’s punishment is far worse than his perceived “crime,” it is clear that there is more going on here than what the official version reveals. The Establishment gets very concerned when someone brooks ultra-radical ideas such as the obligation to question who and what we work for and who our employers are and do. Perhaps Ken was also seen as having questioned the sacred “right to work,” a weapon often wielded by strike-breakers.

The panel that suspended him has accused him of bringing his office into disrepute. That is quite ironic. The office of London’s mayor has never been more highly regarded than during Ken Livingstone’s mayoralty.

Ken Livingstone has repeatedly angered both Zionists and the Establishment by promoting unpopular (among the elite) groups and causes, both in Britain and abroad. Ken’s opponents have now coalesced around the hyped-up charges, that is, around an issue that affects the interests of both groups.

He is being punished for leading marches against the war on Iraq, and for supporting Palestinian rights. He is being punished for linking the local to the global, as he did, for instance, right after the London bombings last July. In other words, he is being punished for being a different kind of politician. But that, I suppose, is exactly how he has “damaged” the reputation of his office. From this point on, all future London mayors, and, God forbid, other politicians, will be expected to live for the people.

Around the world, multi-frontal Zionist assaults continue apace, using different tactics, ranging from terrorism (the destruction of the Askari Mosque in Iraq), to political manipulation (Ken Livingstone’s case), to encouragement of media assaults on Islam (the Danish episode).

Ken has announced he will decide by next week what action to take against the panel’s decision. My guess is that he wants partly to use the time to gauge his support. It is vital to prove to him that he does enjoy wide popular support, both within and without Britain.

If Ken’s appeal fails, he would be responsible for his own legal costs, estimated at 80,000 pounds. I think a proposal to set up a legal defence fund would be a good idea.

Ken has repeatedly stood up for what is right. Now is the time to show that the public (both locally and globally) appreciates the unique politician that he is.
mayor@london.gov.uk
Full contact info

Update:
Ken Livingstone's statement on the suspension of his suspension

Did Israel plan and carry out the bombing of the Askari (Al-Askariya) Mosque in the city of Samarra, possibly through local agents in Iraq? The bombing was reminiscent of the destruction wrought in 1984 on Sikhism's holiest shrine, the Golden Temple, in the city of Amritsar by orders from Indira Gandhi (who paid for it with her life less than five months later).

Yes, I know, the appearances are different. Amritsar's Golden Temple was destroyed by regular (foreign/Indian occupation) armed forces, whereas the Askari Mosque has been destroyed by "terrorists." Yet, who are these "terrorists"?

I think a strong circumstantial case can be constructed for Israeli involvement in the bombing of the Askari Mosque.

I would rule out Al Qaeda involvement. Contrary to the White House generated propaganda that has been pounded into people's brains for the last five years, Al Qaeda's targets are not selected at random. Rather, they have included two types of targets, and only two types: (1) American interests, and (2) what I would call "American mercenaries." By "American mercenaries" I mean anyone who works for US interests, whether directly or indirectly. This includes, for instance, all collaborators in Iraq, such as Iraqi police forces and their recruits, Iraqi armed forces and their recruits, and so on, not to speak of members of the Iraqi "government."

Also, I don't see what benefit could accrue to Al Qaeda from increasing the level of tension between Sunnis and Shias. And I think Iraqi Sunnis, or Sunnis from any other country, were most likely not the perpetrators of this event. Sunnis would know that this type of event would bring down the wrath of the now-powerful majority Shias down on their heads, as it already has. They have little to gain from committing this type of atrocity. Not to speak of the fact that the Shia Imams buried in that mosque are, as close descendants of the Prophet, revered almost as much by Sunnis as they are by Shias.

I cannot imagine any Iraqi (or indeed any Moslem), no matter how fanatically devoted to the Sunni cause, destroying one of Iraq's age-old symbols of pride and nationhood. And, despite my views on the United States government, I cannot imagine Americans perpetrating an atrocity of historical proportions such as this.

Zionist agents are the only group depraved enough, vile enough, and immoral enough to plan and carry out such an inconceivable horror. The Zionist plan may have been to turn Moslems against each other at the very moment when the whole world is beginning to see through the Zionist mythology that for so long has upheld the State of Israel. Their ultimate end, which to them justifies any means whatsoever, is to perpetuate the Zionist cancer in the middle of the Moslem world.

If Moslems do manage to see through this plot, the immense outrage that is bound to be generated by the destruction of the Askari Mosque, rather than dividing them, may play a part in uniting Moslems against their common enemies, and turn dreams of "wiping out" the State of Israel, this root of all evil in the world, into reality.

• My other posts on related topics:
Myth and Myth-take (with Update)
New Age Zionists
Unity, progress, and purpose
The Poodle's UNcle
What do you care?
Boundless Arrogance II
"Democracy in Action"

On the basis of my search, coverage of the following Reuters item has been limited to only two newspapers in the world, one in Kuwait, and the other one in India. The Reuters report is here:

U.S. religious group condemns Iraq war

A fuller report appears here:

US churches apologize over Iraq war

No reports of the apology have appeared either in the US or in Canada... And they dare criticize censorship in China.

To their credit, the US media (and media in many other countries) have widely reported the following Associated Press news item:

Churches Debate Pro-Palestinian Divestment

The US reportage is all the more creditable (and incredible) as, in Canada, by contrast, the news item was carried only by The Ottawa Citizen (unless one wants to count a local paper called The Pierceland Herald that I had not previously heard of, which also published the story).

While the United States government and the EU are in the process of suspending the measly aid they have been providing to Palestinians, and Israel is stealing the taxes it has collected from Palestinians, people of conscience are debating divestment in Israel.

Palestinian relatives of prisoners jailed in Israel demonstrate outside the Palestinian Authority headquarters during the swearing-in session of the new Palestinian Parliament

I am at a loss to explain the lack of coverage in Canada because, for one thing, Canada was at the forefront of the anti-apartheid divestment efforts. Perhaps a few relations and equations of power and influence have since then undergone some radical changes in this country. Not to mention direct pressure exerted by foreign governments and their local agents and lobbyists.

Update:

The latest interesting twist in the divestment issue, published by a single source only:

Bishop questions attack by Chief Rabbi over disinvestment decision

• My other posts on related topics:
Truth as a higher degree of deception
Intolerance masquerades as tolerance
Myth and Myth-take (with Update)
New Age Zionists
Unity, progress, and purpose
The Poodle's UNcle
What do you care?
Boundless Arrogance II

One striking spin-off of the cartoon controversy has been the apparently sincere support and sympathy that many Jewish organizations and individuals in the “Diaspora” have expressed for Moslems. Being experts at recognizing the kind of defamation that is usually a prelude to far worse things, Jewish organizations have been denouncing the cartoons in a very vocal and conspicuous manner.

While this sudden concern with justice on their part is highly commendable, it does make me wonder where they have been during the last sixty or more years. How could they possibly have missed the daily demonization of Palestinians that has always been a staple of news reports and commentary within Israel? Have these Jewish organizations never realized that the demonization of Palestinians has been a tool in the Israeli state’s arsenal of weapons in its long-term project to eradicate the Palestinian nation?

Meanwhile the Zionist entity itself (that is, “Israel”) has been mute on the current controversy. It is perhaps caught between a rock and a hard place. Were it to denounce the cartoons, it would be showing sympathy for Moslems, which would be contrary to the racism that is of the essence of the Zionist entity. Were it to express support for absolute “freedom of speech,” it would be opening itself up to a plethora of risks, both domestic and external. After all, the very existence of the Zionist entity depends on the world’s continued silence regarding its illegitimate and illegal existence and expansionism.

We are still left, though, with the puzzle regarding the expressions of sympathy by Diaspora Jews. I find it hard to believe that the recent events have been so extreme that they have inspired some sort of conversion on their part. After all, we are talking about a bunch of cartoons, albeit a highly offensive bunch of cartoons. The Jews have for decades “endured” with great equanimity the spectacle of the Palestinian genocide, which many of their own leading figures have compared to the Nazi Holocaust. Surely there is nothing in the current situation that is more troubling than that endless tragedy. And I find it difficult to believe that something has touched them viscerally, so as to make it impossible for them not to react as they have. Had they been so strongly susceptible to being touched viscerally as witnesses to injustice, they themselves would have taken up arms against the Zionist entity long ago.

I am forced to conclude that their expressions of sympathy must be rooted in self-interest. Not so many years ago, the Western newsmedia contained no significant amount of criticism of Israel and its actions. Now, thanks to the Iraq Holocaust, the floodgates of criticism, indeed of vilification, of the US and its minions have begun to open up. And, thanks to President Ahmadinejad of Iran, the status and meaning of the Jewish Holocaust, and even its reality, has become a legitimate subject for debate. Perhaps the said Jewish organizations and individuals wish to restore and reinforce the possibility of assigning to specific events, entities, and persons an aura of immunity from discussion and debate.

• My other posts on related topics:
Myth and Myth-take (with Update)
Intolerance masquerades as tolerance
Unity, progress, and purpose

It was, of course, never about freedom of speech and tolerance for divergent opinions. What it was about was to test the limits that intolerance and xenophobia can be carried to. It seems that those limits have finally been reached and breached.

I think Europe may come to regret this latest shameful indiscretion. Its attempt to humiliate Moslems has backfired, revealing instead some of its own deeply-entrenched hypocrisies. The Empire has no clothes.

While touting the "tolerance" of their societies, Europeans have been busily defending, nay celebrating, the intolerance exhibited by the Danish newspaper. If this kind of bigoted insensitivity is an example of European tolerance, then give me the "narrow-minded intolerance" of the Moslem protesters. They, at least, have the clarity of mind to see what is right, along with the courage to fight for it.

• My other posts on related topics:
Truth as a higher degree of deception
Myth and Myth-take (with Update)
What do you care?

I am not one of those people who turn into instant experts on a foreign country after a short visit there. Far from it, and in more ways than one. First, I think understanding a country requires spending a significant portion of one’s life in that country. Second, as I’ll explain, I think understanding Cuba is doubly difficult, because everything about it seems contradictory. In any case, I don’t intend to write a travelog. That is not the sort of thing this blog is about. I'll limit myself to some general comments about some observations that left a deep (and therefore possibly true) impression on me.

Imagine a city with over two million people, hardly any traffic signs or signals and only a handful of marked street names, whose traffic moves in a more orderly fashion than that of a city of similar size in an “advanced” country, say, Toronto.

That is the kind of place Cuba is. Its character is self-contradictory and inexplicable. That is, I think, all the more reason to try to understand it, because I believe its contradictions are the secret of its survival. Cuba did not just happen. I believe the Cuban Revolution happened in Cuba exactly because Cuba is what it is. It is a land where contradictory qualities can be successfully combined, where hope can be combined with despair. We would ordinarily claim such a blend is impossible. But that is only because of our own class prejudices. We are far too comfortable. We think life is about either having a lot of things or not having quite so many things. Life’s circumstances have never forced us to endure real contradictions. We, the so-called progressives, cannot begin to understand human emancipation until we try to rid ourselves of such deeply-ingrained class prejudices.

There is an impossible quality in the Cuban people’s gaze. You find it in old Cuban paintings, as well as in living Cuban eyes. It combines deep melancholy with high hope. I think the Cuban Revolution could only have happened and survived in Cuba, because its people’s character enabled them to endure the incredible suffering that the Empire has imposed on them, so as to hold on to their dignity and hopes for a better future.

When I saw this picture, I assumed it was from Stephen Harper's election campaign. But it turns out that the boy he is shaking hands with is his own son!

For the second time in about a year, Canadians will be off to the polls on January 23 to elect a new government. The main actors include:

Prime Minister Paul Martin, the leader of the Liberal Party, a man who, throughout his long political career, has never wavered from his belief that politics is about money, that people are about money, and that money is about money and more money…

Stephen Harper, the leader of the Conservative Party, a neo-con ideologue who is presumably a politician only because he wasn’t exciting enough to be an economics professor. He thinks the entire universe can be reduced to neo-conservative economic formulas…

Jack Layton, PhD, the leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP), Canada’s social democratic party, a man for all seasons who can be just as comfortable behind a university lectern as on a campaign bus/plane. He is a man who has a solution to every social problem, except the class divide. In fact, he doesn’t seem to concede the existence of capitalist oppression and the class struggle – very odd for a “socialist”…

Gilles Duceppe, the leader of the Bloc Québécois, Canada’s separatist party with social-democratic tendencies that have been drowned out by its mantra that Quebeckers are a “peepole”, presumably with no class distinctions or class-specific interests…

Jim Harris, the leader of the Green Party, possibly the most insidious of the lot, because, while in fact merely a fringe pro-capitalist libertarian clique, the party pretends to be focused on the environment. Its motto should be “The environment – hey, why didn’t we think of this sooner?” The party has never won a seat in Parliament, but it keeps hoping…

Only the first four leaders were allowed to participate in the two debates that were held over the last couple of months. Despite the horrors that have been visited by the American empire on humanity, human rights, international law, and civil rights in the last few years, there was no mention of foreign policy in the debates, at least as far as I can recall. The alienation of the party leaders from their own society’s real nature has translated itself into an alienation from the world at large. It is as if they deliberately refuse to mention anything that has remotely to do with foreign policy, including immigration, for fear that any mention of foreign conflicts (and their class roots) may awaken the sleeping genie of domestic class conflict…

It has become almost a custom for progressive Canadians, who would rather vote for the NDP, to vote “strategically” for the Liberal Party, so as to keep Stephen Harper safely away from the reins of power. I have a feeling, though, that we may see the demise of that idea in this election. I think people have finally realized that Liberal and Conservative policies are two sides of the same coin, and that it is time to try something different. This will, I hope, help the NDP.

• My other posts on related topics:
Unity, progress, and purpose
Today we are all Palestinians

Do cats experience headaches? A couple of weeks ago, my brother's cat had her annual shots and checkup. For two or three days afterwards, she acted a bit peculiarly, even for her. She didn't appear ill exactly, as she had all her usual energy, still able to jump on top of counters and bookcases and cause all the normal troubles that cats are wont to cause. And yet... There was something different about her behaviour. She would sit in one spot for long periods and not make any kind of movement, not even so much as to turn her head. It reminded me of the time when I myself had a headache for several days after some vaccinations. I have little doubt she was having a headache, too.

We are very unfair to animals. And that is, of course, putting it mildly, considering that things like factory farming go on in our world. Ancient religious superstitions have made us insensitive to the fact that all fauna (and even flora), from the lowliest bacteria up to the highest primates, are our long-lost cousins in this world. Conservatives love to talk about values, but I wonder what possible value there could be in holding on to millennia-old superstitions at the expense of truth and humanity.

Meanwhile... my experience with this particular cat over several years has convinced me that she experiences the entire gamut of "human" feelings and emotions in one way or another. And now I find out that she gets headaches, too!

Misha's sit-in protest against salads. A political animal, that's what she is.

One of the problems with politically progressive people is that, themselves being decent people, they often misinterpret the real meaning of what the other side says, because they are unable to comprehend just how indecent and structurally corrupt the other side is. Hence progressives naively tend to give credit to the other side where credit is not due, because they cannot see that what looks and sounds good is not necessarily good in reality. In brief, they often fail to perceive the actual quality of what is right in front of their eyes. By the way, by “the other side” I don’t just mean conservatives. To me, most “moderate” liberals are also an integral part of "the other" camp -- they are the "good cops" to the conservatives' "bad cops," so to speak.

For instance, American progressives are generally unable to see what lies behind the recent statements and opinion pieces by columnists and liberal politicians that call on the American people to resurrect their good nature and reject the evil that has overtaken their government’s behaviour in the last few years. To the progressives, it all sounds like "a good thing," because it sounds like an atonement, and a return to what they have always been told are “the real values” of America, whatever those may be.

I have little doubt, though, that the US journalists and liberal politicians who write the said articles and make the speeches were just as aware of the nature and methods of their government in 2001 as they are today -- not to speak of the rest of the last 60 years. That nature and those methods (irrespective of which party happens to be in government) have not changed. What has changed is that, for the first time, those facts are common knowledge, threatening the legitimacy of both government as such and the media. That is the reason I view those types of articles or statements as amounting to an extreme form of damage control (to protect the interests of both the journalists and the government).

The mass media's real "job,” unbeknownst to the general public, is and has always been to protect the status quo, that is, to protect the interests of the governing classes. What currently threatens their legitimacy (and that of the ruling classes) is not that they have not been doing their job in the last few years, but rather that the public has begun to realize that the real function of the mass media (and the government) is to work against the public interest. This growing realization is a terrifying prospect for the ruling classes. Hence they would do anything, including lamenting their own personal and individual "failures," to prevent such a ruinous outcome for the system.

To restate the matter, there has not been any failure as such. In the last few years, the mass media and the government have been doing exactly what they were designed to do within the context of the capitalist system. The lamentations are meant to keep people from realizing this fundamental fact.

By the way, Bush’s recent confessions about his “failures” fall into the same category, as they are meant to deflect attention from the anxieties of the extreme right end of the political spectrum regarding the declining legitimacy of the system as a whole. Apologies by a man who has never apologized for anything are proof that something much more fundamental than his presidency is in jeopardy. For instance, Bush’s overt criminality has helped raise the world’s consciousness of what “freedom” and “human rights” in the vocabulary of US governments are about. Both terms in fact mean unimpeded hegemony of capital.

Of course, any opposition to Bush's crimes is welcome. Still, I think we should be cautious about the source and the reasons for the opposition.

• My other posts on related topics:
Myth and Myth-take (with Update)
McCain's License to Torture?
What do you care?
Commandress in Chief
Opportunism, thy name is Dubya!

The disgraceful but predictable campaign of defamation and lies against President Ahmadinejad of Iran continues unabated. Words and phrases are plucked out of the context of long speeches, without any attention to the overall gist and purpose of each speech, merely to be used as ammunition for propaganda against someone whose only crime is that he does not, nor does he plan to, bow down to the will of the Western politico-financial complex, either in action or in spirit, but rather plans solely to follow the dictates of his conscience regarding the good of his nation as well as that of the region at large.

Mohammad Khatami, the former President of Iran, again and again urged a “dialogue of civilizations.” Khatami’s own mentality, however, was captive to the Western monologue, and his call fell on deaf ear in the West.

Ahmadinejad’s monumental task is to turn the monologue into a true dialogue. As the West is completely unaware of the existence of a point of view other than its own, Ahmadinejad faces the task of using harsh language to try to break through the legacy of decades of brainwashing.

Communication of complex ideas is not an easy task. Had the Western media been unbiased reporters of facts, the task of conveying ideas across cultural barriers would still have been prone to error and misunderstanding. But the even greater problem is that the Western media are very far from being unbiased reporters of facts. Rather, they approach world events through the particular ideological prisms of their financial and political masters.

A further difficulty that Ahmadinejad faces is unwittingly of his own making. He is a scholar with little political experience, and he always speaks as a scholar, which places a barrier between him and ordinary people. Scholars deal in concepts and meanings. Ordinary people deal in feelings and emotions. Scholars see the world in terms of conceptual and impersonal structures. Ordinary people see the world in terms of emotional and personal frameworks. Scholars faced with political problems imagine, rightly or wrongly, that correct conceptualizations can solve those problems. Hence they see their task as the furthering of the formulation of those conceptualizations, but in a language that they hope would make it possible for the public at large to participate in the process.

A short while ago, the Western media reported Ahmadinejad as having spoken of “wiping out Israel.” In reality, in a speech whose theme was the urgency of finding a political solution to the Palestinian nightmare, he had simply employed a quotation from the Ayatollah Khomeini in order to illustrate a point. He could not possibly have foreseen that his words would be taken out of context and mistranslated to be trumpeted across the world. Again, one must keep in mind that he speaks as a scholar and deals in ideas. When he used the quotation about “wiping out Israel,” he was speaking of the necessity of a radical modification in what the concept of “Israel” represents. He was not speaking of some kind of physical destruction of a physical entity.

If one sets aside the anti-Moslem blinkers and looks squarely at the facts, one will notice that President Ahmadinejad's polemics simply represent the view that things cannot go on the way they have been, and a solution to the plight of the Palestinian people is not only desirable but inevitable.

More recently, he was accused of having denied the Holocaust by calling it a “myth.” Again, it is absolutely imperative to keep in mind that Ahmadinejad speaks as a scholar. To the average person on the street, whose thoughts are vague and whose feelings are strong, the word “myth” is a synonym for “lie” or “fantasy.” To the scholar, on the other hand, the word “myth” has a specific meaning, or rather several specific meanings, depending on the specific context.

Recall that he was not speaking of myth in general, but rather of myth in relation to a specific nation, that is, the Jewish nation. In other words, he was speaking of a national myth.

Again, to the person on the street, the phrase “national myth” simply signifies a lie or fantasy about a particular nation. To a scholar, on the other hand, the phrase has a very specific meaning, which has nothing at all to do with lies or fantasies. “A ‘national myth’ is an inspiring or patriotic story … that serves as a national symbol of a country, and re-affirms a country's ‘national values.’” A national myth is sometimes called a “founding myth,” and is not a “myth” in the sense of being false.

For instance, Canada’s “national myth” revolves around Loyalist migrations to Canada, the War of 1812, and so on. These events really happened, of course, and the word “myth” is not used disparagingly in referring to them. A "national myth" is, rightly or wrongly, the foundation of a nation's identity. The only possible disputes revolve around questions such as whether these events really deserve the place they have been assigned in a nation's history, or whether they have been correctly interpreted, and so on. And that is exactly the kind of point that Ahmadinejad was trying to make regarding the “national myth” of the state of Israel. As a scholar, his aim is not to dispute historical facts. Rather, he wants to try to clarify the conceptual structures that historical facts are embedded in.

Nowhere does he deny the Holocaust. Nowhere does he call it a “myth” in the sense of being false. Just the opposite, as a matter of fact. The subject of his speech was the West's attitude towards and exploitation of religion. He was also trying to defend himself against the charge of anti-Semitism. He wanted to point to what he sees as the hypocrisy of the West, which, in its pursuit of secularism, abandoned all religions, including Judaism, a long time ago, while continuing to draw every possible political advantage out of the suffering of the Jewish people.

In his view, it is the West that has turned the Holocaust into a falsehood. It is the West that has turned the real sufferings of millions of real people into a political weapon.

By putting together his statements regarding "wiping out Israel" and "the myth of Holocaust," we arrive at the essence of his thought on this subject, which is that Israel should give itself a new national myth. By giving itself a more positive and inclusive national myth, Israel may finally succeed in freeing itself from vassalage to the West and assert itself as a true nation.

An editorial in a Canadian newspaper recently coined the term "Iran's dark days,” referring to the period of "the late 1970s and early 1980s, which was highlighted by the seizure of the American embassy."

A point that may be incomprehensible from a Western-centric perspective is that the seizure of the US embassy was the least important event of that period to the people of Iran. The real highlight of that period was that the people of Iran managed to throw off the yoke of the Shah's US-imposed tyranny and regain their national dignity and independence, a unique and unprecedented achievement in the Middle East.

The darkness of those days, from the Iranian people's perspective, stemmed from the distortions that the Islamic Revolution's original purpose suffered because of Saddam's invasion and other US-inspired pressures.

The way I see it, President Ahmadinejad's focus is on reviving what the Islamic Revolution was really about. Briefly, that essence consisted of freedom, independence, and the creation of a political system where the principles of Islam would be the final arbiters of right and wrong.

If that does not suit the interests of the West, so be it.

Update (January 2): As I have explained in this post, it is a myth that President Ahmadinejad called the Holocaust a myth. And, as I mentioned in a comment to this post, the myth was created by a translator at the New York Times' Tehran office. The lie has now caught up with the Western media. People are asking "Wasn't it this guy who was just denying the Holocaust? How is it that now he is calling Israel a continuation of the European genocide of Jews? If he is a Holocaust-denier, how can he be talking about a genocide?"

The fact is that a foreign leader has made certain statements in the last couple of months in a foreign language. The statements have been translated by the newsmedia of his country’s enemies. Because of the contradictions that have arisen between the translated statements, some people are trying to understand what the foreign leader has really said. Another group of people, possibly anti-Semites, are trying to fish the muddy waters or exploit the situation. The fact that anti-Semites use similar words to the words attributed to Ahmadinejad does not mean they say the same thing. A third group, whose motivations are also suspect, do nothing but hurl abuse at anyone who tries to get an objective understanding of what is really going on.

• My other posts on related topics:
McCain's License to Torture?
What do you care?
Unity, progress, and purpose
The Poodle's UNcle
Commandress in Chief
Opportunism, thy name is Dubya!
Ayatollah Robertson

"Yeah, right!"

• Also see Special Bulletin: Voltaire's "prayer" answered!

American liberals may well accuse Senator McCain of having served as a useful tool for the Bushites on the torture issue, in that, by diverting the public's attention away from the real problem — the US Administration’s preposterous definition of torture — he has made it impossible to discuss the issue that really should be discussed. But that is only one part of the story. Yes, it is true that Bush can now simply claim that the US "does not torture," skirting completely around the question of what he means by the word "torture." The Bushites have manipulated the definition of torture so as to make it meaningless. And it is true that, meanwhile, activities that any rational person would consider to be torture will continue as before.

But this whole discussion conveniently neglects the fact that US governments of both political stripes have always made extensive use of torture, whether by their own agents or through proxies. The current debates make it appear as if torture were something new for the US. McCain cannot have been unaware of this history, knowing what he does about torture.

Perhaps his whole campaign around restoring "America’s honour" has really been about trying to stave off the risk of this grisly history — and the real nature of the American system of government — penetrating the public's consciousness any more than it has already.

To look at it another way, McCain, by obliterating both the history and the present in a single stroke, has given carte blanche, not only to this particular Administration, but also to all future (and past) US governments, to employ torture whenever, however, and wherever they wish. Quite an achievement for one who is purportedly such a vehement opponent of the practice.

http://www.parascope.com/articles/0397/kubark04.htm

• My other posts on related topics:
Commandress in Chief
Opportunism, thy name is Dubya!

Australia's Fueh... er... Prime Minister John Howard has refused to attribute the race riots to racism. Hmm... Anyway, below are some highlights of Howard's career, which may shed some light on the current events.

He predicted, in 1985, that "The times will suit me." Not that the times do suit him, but that they will. He has made his self-fulfilling prophecy come true by pursuing policies such as:

Opposition to multiculturalism

Promotion of "a shared national identity"

Claims that the rate of Asian immigration was too high

Repudiation of any accommodation with Asia or the Aborigines

Turning away Asian asylum seekers on the high seas

"Border protection" issues

Enthusiastic participation in the war on Iraq

Obviously, the race riots have nothing to do with racism. If they did, John Howard would know...

There is nothing better than seeing this movie if you are looking for a brief (and entertaining) course on:

- The actual function and nature of terrorism in the Middle East
- The reasons for US meddling in the region
- The role of the oil industry, both on its own and as a US government partner
- The interconnections among all of these factors

I saw it last night, and loved it. The cast is star-studded, with George Clooney, Christopher Plummer, and others (if you are a trekkie like me, there is also the familiar face of Alexander "Dr Bashir" Siddig). The story is a fictionalized version of the facts revealed or uncovered by former CIA agent Robert Baer in his books.

There are thousands of such pictures. On one side, American thugs and murderers committing every possible atrocity against the helpless people of Iraq, without feeling bound by any principles of humanity or even common decency. On the other side, their President, a thug and murderer of long standing, laughing and smirking it all off.

• My other posts on related topics:
What do you care?
Unity, progress, and purpose
The Poodle's UNcle

Robert Fisk, the Middle East correspondent for the British newspaper The Independent, was in Toronto tonight. He gave a passionate speech centered on the Western newsmedia’s complicity and complacency in misrepresenting the war on Iraq. His mixture of humour and horror leaves a strong impression on the listener. He manages to bring to life fairly abstract subjects such as the old and new crimes of the Western powers in the Middle East finally revisiting them in the form of terrorism, now and in the future. He should definitely not be missed if the opportunity to hear him presents itself.

His historical analysis is highly engaging. Possibly because of his great passion and humanity, though, and the fact that he has witnessed so much death and suffering, he seems to look in the human heart for a solution to the problems he identifies. I found him rather Dickensian in believing that if only enough people were made to care about the suffering of strangers, war would turn to peace. He seems to think the problem is that most people in the West just don’t care about people in other countries. I find this point of view inadequate. No-one really cares about the situation of people in other countries. In the same way that Americans, for example, don’t care about the suffering of Iraqis, Iraqis don’t care about the suffering of Americans... Heck, most of the time people don’t care about the suffering of their next-door neighbour, not to speak of the suffering of strangers on the other side of the world, except perhaps when a natural disaster strikes.

So I don’t think the problem is a dearth of caring. People need something they can personally connect and relate to before they can care. The case of natural disasters is a case in point. People who on a day to day basis have no comprehension, and hence no sympathy, for the daily suffering of a Latin American shanty-town dweller or a victim of military action, suddenly open up their purses, albeit briefly, when a natural disaster strikes. I think they can imagine, at least at the back of their mind, the same thing happening to them and how they would feel if it did happen to them. Normally, people justify the suffering of others to themselves, which allows them to disregard it. You know the usual line: people suffer because they are lazy, have been brought up badly, and so on. I think such people can be made to care if they see the absolute irrationality and futility of what is going on, that is, by taking all justifications away from them.

It is useless to try to raise anti-war sentiment in the US by appealing to people’s compassion. People, at best, have compassion for their own group. It is, therefore, much more useful to help them see the irrationality and futility of the suffering of members of their own group. For instance, by pointing out to them that although the war on Iraq is going nowhere, more and more American soldiers are getting killed by the enemies that they themselves have created, and that the Iraqi Resistance is growing stronger. One indication of this is the number of American soldiers that are getting killed by the action of so-called “improvised explosive devices” or IEDs, that is, “home-made” bombs, a resistance movement’s weapon of choice. The number has been steadily climbing since the beginning of the war.


The November 2005 figure is preliminary, and covers only the first 21 days of that month. At the current rate, the final November figure will probably exceed 50.

• My other posts on related topics:
Unity, progress, and purpose
The Poodle's UNcle

Video here

Another video

As a bonus, another picture from the same disastrous tour, with Genghis Khan looking approvingly down at Dubya in Mongolia's capital.

CBC News -- A man who spent the night in a Montreal dumpster is lucky to be alive after he was emptied into a garbage truck and later pulled to safety. Montreal fire Chief Gilles Ducharme said the man could have been crushed as the truck compressed each load of garbage. "We had pieces of wood, steel bars, so he was lucky that none of those passed through his body," Ducharme said. The man is under observation because of the risk of internal bleeding after being compacted in the truck. Driver Michel Duval was picking up garbage from dumpsters Monday morning when he heard noises from the back of his truck. He said he had probably dumped a couple of loads on top of the man before realizing he was inside. Fire and ambulance workers rescued the man, pulling garbage from the truck and leaving a small, smelly mountain of food waste, wood and crushed boxes piled on the ground.

The "lucky" man is now in hospital with crushed legs and a broken pelvis. Meanwhile Paul Martin, the Canadian Prime Minister, facing an election in a couple of months, has just promised a couple of big tax cuts, taking still more money out of social services than he has already. We no longer live in a world that can be called a "human" world in any of the possible senses of that word.

According to news report from post-bombing Jordan, the bombing has given rise to a (possibly temporary) consensus between pro- and anti-monarchy sections of the population. At one level, this is not surprising. No-one likes bombings, least of all the bombers themselves. That does not, however, make the above consensus any less of a puzzle. On one side are the Jordanians of Palestinian origin, who have lost everything to Israel, and who have every reason to loathe the Jordanian monarchy’s long-standing complicity with the Zionist entity. On the other side are the Jordanian elite, whose livelihood depends on a parasitic existence vis-à-vis King Abdullah, along with the brainwashed masses who, as usual, don’t believe in the possibility of anything better. The current “unity” between the pro- and anti-monarchy sections of the population is of little value as far as political progress is concerned. It is a unity without common interests or a common purpose, and therefore cannot lead to anything. It is a false unity.

Now take the unity that has arisen among widely divergent groups within the Iraqi Resistance. The Iraqi Resistance appears to consist of many groups that would not ordinarily give each other the time of day, to put it mildly. This is, of course, the pattern that has held true of all resistance movements in history. What unites them is not a common ideology or lifestyle, but rather active engagement in a common purpose. This is true unity.

It may seem to take us far afield, but last night I happened to be watching the latest TV version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped. For the few people such as myself who didn’t already know the story, it is, briefly, about the adventures of a mixture of fictional and historical people in the context of the English invasion of Scotland in the eighteenth century. The actual story and history are complicated, but my point is about the character Alan Breck Stewart, who actually existed, and was a minor Scottish hero. When he is not busy being a hero, he is a gambling and whoring thief. His personality and character, though, are irrelevant to his being a hero. He was a hero and a progressive, solely because he fought the English invaders.

It is not our ideology, party affiliation, or “beliefs” that make us progressives. What makes us progressives is what we do and our concrete program of action.

• My other posts on related topics:
The Poodle's UNcle
Today we are all Palestinians

MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina (Reuters) - Argentine soccer legend Diego Maradona joined other celebrities late on Thursday aboard a Chavez-sponsored private train headed from Buenos Aires to Mar del Plata, where Maradona will lead a protest march.

"It gives me pride to be on this train to repudiate the human trash that is Bush," Maradona told reporters before approaching the dimly lit platform, where Boca Juniors soccer club fans greeted him with pounding drums and stadium chants.



Meanwhile, Vicente Fox, Dubya's spokesman in Mexico, has come up with the brilliant idea of excluding from the FTAA any country (read: Venezuela) that disagrees with his master. I wonder what Fox will propose to do with the huge majorities in all the other Latin American countries who also want no part of any deal that has Dubya's stench associated with it.

I often wonder how Britain’s Great Poodle keeps himself from bursting out laughing while making his grandiloquent pronouncements. One of the latest examples was the Poodle’s fatwah regarding the Iranian President’s statement of the obvious, namely, that the Israeli state is illegitimate. The Poodle: “I have never come across a situation of a president of a country saying they want to wipe out another country.” Never? Not even once?... But wait a minute. Is it even true that President Ahmadinejad said he wants to wipe out another country? Did he say he is contemplating military action against the Zionist entity? No. All he did was to state the obvious and predict that Israel’s illegitimacy will eventually catch up with it (the same way that Dubya's illegitimacy is finally catching up with him). He also expressed the revulsion of the world’s progressive forces at the actions of Moslem governments that have recognized Israel or contemplate moves in that direction.

Incidentally, the last time that Iran made a major military move against another country was, I think, in 1738 (yes, almost three hundred years ago) when it invaded India. To find the next example before that one, we would probably have to go back to Xerxes’ invasion of Greece in 480 BC! I think the Poodle and his Master alone have committed more murder and aggression than Iran has committed in the entire three millennia of its history.

Meanwhile, UNcle Tom Annan was busy doing what he is best at, that is, turning a blind eye to violations of historical proportions of international law, and simultaneously condemning anyone who endangers the status quo. UNcle Tom Annan: “Under the United Nations Charter, all members have undertaken to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State.” I guess the Iraq invasion that has resulted in up to a quarter million deaths does not measure up to UNcle Tom’s criteria of what constitutes a “threat or use of force.”

Meanwhile the Poodle: “There has been a long time in which everyone has been saying to me 'tell us you are not going to do anything about Iran'. If they carry on like this, the question people are going to be asking is 'when are you going to do something'.”

Do you think UNcle Tom is thinking about condemning the Poodle’s statement? Don’t hold your breath.

The above image should not to be mistaken as a picture of Dubya's halo. It is in fact an actual picture of the barrel bottom that God has been scraping.

Last night I watched the first episode of ABC's "Commander in Chief." Or maybe I should say "the last episode," judging by the reviews. It is a kind of West Wing Light or West Wing for Dummies (somewhat in the way that the Star Trek: Voyager series was Star Trek: The Next Generation for Dummies).

Geena Davis plays the Independent Vice-President Mackenzie Allen who assumes the job of a Republican President on his death. In the tradition of television's propaganda shows (but – someone might ask – is there any other kind?), the most critical problems faced by the US Government are things like rescuing a woman held for adultery in Nigeria. TV Governments never find themselves face to face with catastrophes such as, for instance, having destroyed a whole country.

Anyway, President Allen’s first act as President is to bestow American benevolence on the said Nigerian woman. The woman has been sentenced to death, and is to be executed in some crude fashion, which, needless to say, offends American sensibilities. Any kind of violence, don’t you know, offends American sensibilities. The Nigerian ambassador is duly summoned to the White House to hear about plans for a massive rescue operation in case the woman is not released into US custody. Nigeria duly complies.

There have in reality been several such verdicts in Nigeria in recent years, and the US Government (the real US Government, that is) has done nothing whatsoever in any of those cases, other than registering strong condemnations. Those verdicts were eventually overturned through diplomatic intervention by other African states and worldwide protests, which is an example of the multilateralism that solves the world's problems instead of creating new ones.

This is, of course, quite normal. No US government has ever intervened militarily to save the life of a foreign national, unless that foreign national happened to be of some use to the US government. Examples are German scientists who were removed from Germany after WWII, given new employment in weaponry and rocket development, and spared from facing the Nuremberg trials.

In the TV world, though, every undertaking of the US government is for the purpose of furthering truth and justice. Even when it does something that smells of villainy, it is for a good end, such as the assassination of an Arab leader on West Wing. After all, he was suspected of supporting terrorism …

As I have said a number of times in this blog, even American leftists are unable to perceive the real nature of their government. So, for instance, Martin Sheen, who has spent much of his life protesting against US policies, was happy to act in a TV show (West Wing) that only served the usual propaganda line. Even American leftists, in other words, see the evil that their government commits as an aberration. They are blind to the real nature of the entire American political project since its inception, which began with the Founding Fathers’ promulgation of racism and expansionism.

When a Democratic TV President played by a known professional protester failed to portray the reality of US power, what can we hope for from an Independent one?

• My other posts on related topics:
Opportunism, thy name is Dubya!

...but Cindy Sheehan is being arrested!

Lots of info on this weekend's worldwide protests:

http://www.unitedforpeace.org/ (with links to peace groups in many countries)

http://www.indybay.org/antiwar/

http://www.stopwar.org.uk/

http://www.answerla.org/

http://www.internationalanswer.org/

http://answer.pephost.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ANS_S24index

http://www.sdcpj.org/

Dubya has taken "responsibility" for the disaster-creating response to the Gulf Coast disaster. This is a man who in his whole life has never accepted blame for anything. So why the current uncharacteristic behaviour? I don't think the answer lies in the plummeting popularity ratings, as unpopularity is nothing new to him. It is something he has bravely weathered throughout his life! Rather, the explanation lies in his next statement: "Are we capable of dealing with a severe attack? That’s a very important question and it’s in the national interest that we find out what went on so we can better respond." Although the latter statement was made in response to a question and appeared spontaneous, the fact is that it has been a constant theme since the disaster. In fact, it has been a constant theme for the past four years. He has exploited nearly every single negative news of any kind since 9/11 to escalate the level of paranoia in the US population. Yet, it seems, he never felt he was being quite convincing enough. Dubya's "genius" is in his current juxtaposition of manufacture of paranoia and the Gulf Coast disaster. Rather than focusing on disaster prevention and putting in place better preparations for relief and rescue, Dubya's first priority is to tell the American people they have not yet sacrificed enough resources and rights on the altar of imaginary security. He chooses to exploit the tragedy of New Orleans to advance his agenda of transforming every single event in the world into an actual or potential "attack" on the United States. That so profound a lack of ethical bearings and simple humanity can be found in a man is indeed a marvel of historical proportions.

P.S.:

From an Associated Press story on Sep. 8:

Pelosi, D-Calif., said Brown had "absolutely no credentials" when Bush picked him to run FEMA. She related that she urged Bush on Tuesday [Sep. 6] to fire Brown.
"He said, 'Why would I do that?' " Pelosi said.
"I said 'because of all that went wrong, of all that didn't go right last week.' And he said 'What didn't go right?' "
"Oblivious, in denial, dangerous," she said.

Well, I beg to differ. Brown did have the one qualification that counts, namely absolute loyalty to Bush. The rest is immaterial.

Pelosi has got most of the rest wrong as well. Dubya is indeed dangerous—very dangerous—but he is not in denial or oblivious. Neo-conservatives don’t care what ordinary people think, or what effects their policies have on such people. Incidentally (or not so incidentally), they don’t care about their “legacy” either. All they care about is implementing the agenda they sought political office for. Again, the rest is immaterial.

The issue of Dubya’s approval rating, therefore, is irrelevant, because it doesn’t register where it could count, namely with Dubya himself. There is no threshold of popularity rating below which he would feel obliged to resign.

At the moment, the only thing that his buddies and he care about is that they will be able to make a whole lot of money out of Gulf Coast reconstruction, as they have and will through the Iraq war. Prior to Katrina, the only alternative available to them was to begin another war. Domestic reconstruction is much more convenient!

I was thinking of writing a post exploring the root causes of the New Orleans tragedy, but I finally decided it would be seen as exploiting the misery of thousands of people for the sake of expressing my political opinions. At the same time, I feel a great urge to make some sort of a comment. Many years ago, I visited New Orleans. I walked in the dreamlike atmosphere of the French Quarter. I listened to the incomparable New Orleans jazz at the incredible Preservation Hall, where you walked into what looked like an ordinary house, and found yourself face to face with living jazz history. I feel deeply saddened by the loss that New Orleans has suffered, and hope for its recovery to its former glory.

Pat Robertson, the American televangelist (of the "700 Club" fame, or rather infamy) has issued a fatwa for the assassination of President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela for "spreading communism and Moslem extremism." The "free press," those obsequious hired hands of the highest bidders for their services, will doubtless laugh it all off, and refuse to discuss the serious implications of the issue.

Robertson has quite bluntly stated that the reason he wants President Chavez dead is that the Venezuelan government, according to Robertson, poses a threat to US economic interests. In today's US politics, it is apparently quite acceptable for a religious leader like Robertson constantly to meddle in purely political and economic affairs. On the other hand, when the late Ayatollah Khomeini issued his call for Salman Rushdie's assassination on purely religious grounds, as the latter had, among many other indiscretions, called the Prophet of Islam a whoremonger, Western liberals didn't lose any time in joining their conservative brethren's condemnation of the fatwa.

Robertson's fatwa came only a couple of days after Pope Benedict's call on Moslem leaders (while visiting Germany!) to promote the fight against terrorism (as if real religious leaders were in the business of promoting anything other than religion), without once mentioning the terror inflicted by the US on the people of Iraq for their oil. It is clear that whereas religion in the East is a component of nationalist resurgence against capitalism and imperialism, religion in the West is increasingly a handmaiden to the interests of the Empire.

On this day, all progressive forces are, at some level, “Palestinians,” in that they join in solidarity with the Palestinian nation, and share its joy in today’s victory. Yet we are all “Palestinians” at a deeper level as well. In an age when humanity’s greatest enemies, the United States government and transnational capital, appear to have achieved permanent ascendancy, we all share and feel, to some extent, the experience of oppression and defeat that the Palestinian nation has intimately known for so long. Yet we also share its resolve and resiliency. We share its determination that no matter what obstacles the enemy may throw in our path, the final triumph shall be ours.

One of the most despicable individuals on the face of the earth (that's the guy who is praying to George HW Bush) is now under the earth. The path to salvation, not to speak of the path to glowing obituaries, is neither by faith nor by works. It is by sucking up to the Americans, mercilessly suppressing all dissent, and squandering the wealth of one's nation.

Yesterday I found myself suffering from symptoms of smog poisoning. I had heard many times that living in a polluted environment is like smoking a couple of packs of cigarettes a day, but I had assumed this was some clean-air advocate’s attempt to exaggerate the danger so as to underline the issue’s importance. Until yesterday, that is. Today, I have little doubt about the matter. I felt just like a heavy smoker does, and I don’t even smoke. And it happened just after we had particularly high levels of smog approaching the "dangerous" level for a couple of days in a row. Today I feel much better, but now I am sure this sort of thing has the same long-term effect on me and others as heavy smoking.

There used to be a time, and not so long ago at that, when Toronto had incredibly clean air for a large metropolis. We have more cloudy days than many other places. But the thing was that the cloudy days made you look forward to the clear days when the sun would shine in a beautiful blue sky that extended from one horizon to the other.

Not any longer. These days, there are cloudy smoggy days and clear smoggy days. On some days, in fact, you are not sure which one you are looking at. Even on the clearest days, the sky is a grayish blue, with a band of pure gray around the horizon.

It all happened very gradually. A few years ago, we had our first experience of “smog alerts” issued by the weather people. We thought of it as a passing curiosity. More importantly, we thought it would send a clear warning to government and business that urgent action was needed. But very little was done, and the problem got worse with each passing year. What had begun as smoggy days extended into smoggy weeks. Still, we thought, “Oh well, this is just some problem associated with summer heat waves.” Then, last year, during some of the coldest days of winter, we had our first experience of winter smog. We could not believe our eyes, but there it was. I think we experienced something like what scientists feel when they encounter a phenomenon that contradicts every known fact.

The Ontario government has always, more or less, washed its hands of the problem, claiming that most of the air pollution comes from south of the border. Whether or not that is true, and I have my doubts about that, I don’t think it absolves them of the responsibility to do something about it right here in Ontario. And, by the way, one reason I have doubts about their claim is that a couple of days ago the smog blanket covered the entire southern half of Ontario, up to the North Bay area and farther north.

Be that as it may, the Ontario government’s inaction makes me wonder who is going to defend our interests and really do something about this problem, which is killing a large number of people right here in Ontario.

What is the mandate of a government official, as he/she sees it? Is it to fight for the people, so that they will live happier healthier lives, free of unnecessary suffering and exploitation? I don’t think so. Government officials are trained to think first and foremost of promoting business. They think of that as their function. They think greater business activity is synonymous with a better society. Government officials and their associated technocrats think there is a “fix” for every problem, and such fixes always involve awarding a contract to some business or other. Yet the nature of such business activity, as with the capitalist system as a whole, is to exacerbate problems in the long run, rather than to help solve them.

One looks around in vain for anyone who represents the people’s real long-term interests. Even many so-called environmental advocacy groups are in fact business lobbies. There is a well-known Ontario organization, which shall remain nameless, whose professed mandate is to research and advocate regarding issues related to pollution. The reality is that this particular organization’s actual motive is to reduce even further the measly amount of government action regarding this problem, and to advocate for the interests of the polluting industries. With friends like these …


*The name of one of the characters in a Monty Python skit was Smoke-Too-Much.

In the wake of the London bombings, sympathy for all victims, of whatever nationality, whether British, American, or Iraqi, has been urged upon us. People who are sympathtic towards the victims of the much larger Iraqi tragedy have been told that all victims are the same, and no-one is a bigger victim than anyone else. We have been told that British or American bombing victims and war casualties deserve as much sympathy as the Iraqi victims of British and American policy. We have been told that making such distinctions would amount to committing the sin of blaming the victim, a deadly sin according to the liberal scripture.

But there really is no equivalence of victimhood. We, as citizens of Western nations, are responsible for most of the evil that has characterized the last hundred years, whether we are willing or able to admit it or not. Majorities of us have again and again voted in governments that we knew were a curse to the rest of the world. Why did we vote them in? Because they promised us tax cuts, jobs, and the rest of the self-centered package that voters are bought with. We have again and again voted in governments that we knew were intent on plundering the rest of the world. Why did we do it? Because they plundered it for our benefit.

Specifically, there is no equivalence between victims of American terrorism and those of Islamist terrorism. Why? Because the West, and most especially the US government, is the source and origin of both varieties of terrorism. The US government is the source and origin of Islamist terrorism because: (1) With the complicity of its old buddy-in-plunder, the British government, it established and has continued to give its unconditional support to the State of Israel. The depredations of the government of Israel have been an endless source of misery among Palestinians, fueling political and religious extremism, and retarding political growth in the Middle East as a whole. (2) The US Government, through the CIA, brought down the secular democratically-elected government of Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, returned the despotic Shah to power, and set back that country's political development for many decades to come. Iran is still suffering the consequences. (3) The US Government, in the 1980s, created various terrorist groups in Afghanistan to attack Afghan government and Soviet forces. Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban, and various other re-energized forms of extremism throughout the Moslem world are the direct fruits of that project. (4) The US Government, through its Cairo embassy, made contact with the “CIA asset” Saddam Hussein in 1959, eventually helping the Baathists bring down the government of Iraq in 1963. And, as is more widely-known, the US government was Saddam’s primary supporter in his war against the democratically-elected government of Iran during the 1980s.

I won’t go on. We, in the West, are all responsible for this, every one of us, whether by being directly complicit in the crimes, or by bringing such governments to power in our countries, or by not doing enough to defeat them and the socioeconomic ideology that they represent.

I am outraged, partly because of all the misdirected outrage that I saw today. To use an old cliché, I am, yet again, shocked by man’s inhumanity to man. At least seven hundred Iraqis have been killed—just in the last two months. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been injured—just in the last two months. Overall, because of the American invasion of Iraq, a quarter of a million Iraqis have been killed. Millions of Iraqis have been injured, maimed, or incapacitated. Millions of other Iraqis have suffered unspeakable deprivations and horrors of various kinds, not to mention outright torture, all because of and only because of the invasion.

Had there been any humanity left in this world, the carnage in Iraq would have ended the reign of the American Empire long ago. There would have been such an outcry of morally outraged humanity the like of which would never have been heard before. Yet, there is hardly a peep from anyone. Even the daily toll of the dead has disappeared from newscasts.

Today, 37 people died in bomb blasts in London. 700 others were injured. There has been nothing else in the news today. Is the blood of these 37 people any redder than the blood of the quarter million Iraqi dead? Hotlines have been set up for Canadians and others to call to find out if anyone they knew is among the casualties. Where are the hotlines for Iraqis to call to find out the fate of their loved ones? Am I being unsympathetic to the plight of the British dead and injured? Are you being sympathetic to the plight of the Iraqi dead and injured?

All that a sane and rational person can hope for is that this attack will have the same kind of effect on the British people as the similar series of bombings in Madrid last year had on the Spanish people. The Madrid bombings incited the Spanish people to throw out the Bushite government of Aznar, and elect a new government that put a quick end to Spain’s complicity in the Iraqi genocide. Will the British people finally say a loud and clear No to the government of the ignominy whose name is Blair?

Please go to Live 8 and sign the petition. All the right-wing think tanks are up in arms against dropping Third World debt and increasing aid, leaving no doubt in my mind that these are worthwhile and necessary objectives!

President Chavez met Mr Ahmadinejad, then Tehran's mayor, while visiting Iran in 2004

The fact that all branches of Christianity have conservative as well as progressive wings is puzzling. In the case of Catholicism, the Vatican is poles apart from phenomena such as Liberation Theology. In the case of Protestantism, there seems to be little in common between right-wing evangelical denominations, on one hand, and religious organizations such as the United Church of Canada, on the other. An obvious question is: If the right and the left wing represent the same religion, then how can they be so far apart? Another question is: If the right wing of each main branch of the religion has more in common with the right wing of the other branch than with its own left wing, in what sense are they two different branches? To claim that religion is not about such things, but rather about otherworldly matters, is to avoid the issue. Indeed, both the right and the left wings would say that their political and social practice arise from their religious faith, and are not incidental to it.

I think the answer is fairly simple, at least as simple as such complex matters can be. Religiosity (of a sort) can be an escape and an excuse from accepting social responsibility, from having a real (analyzed) political viewpoint. Religiosity then becomes an excuse to turn inward and renounce everything except one’s own interest, disguised as interest in personal salvation. It is to live the powerless apolitical life of the mass, with nary a thought of the universal. But this is not the only possible kind of turning inward. There is another kind of turning inward that is merely a prelude to turning outward again. This kind of inwardness leads to the recognition of social responsibility as the essence of religiosity and spirituality.

Real spirituality means recognizing oneself as a part of the world, not just rhetorically, but in practice. Being a part of the world means getting involved in things that are forming its destiny. It means adding one’s voice to the chorus of voices that still see the possibility of a bright future for humanity, the voices of those who have not given up on the ideal that a truly human life is the only kind worth living, and that such a life is lived in communion with the rest of humanity. Self-centered pursuit of one’s own interests and the interests of one’s own group is about as unspiritual as one can get. It is concentrating on matter, rather than spirit. Spirit is movement, change, and flux. Renouncing progressive politics amounts to renouncing the world, and any chance the world may have of becoming a spiritual world. It amounts to abandoning it to people like George W. Bush, who see the world as a tool for making money, and who see spirituality itself as a means to enhancing their self-interest. (The distinction between "mass" and "universal" was originated by the French philosopher Gabriel Marcel.)

I am going to use the current political situation in Canada to illustrate a topic I have been thinking about. I hope my non-Canadian readers, who are in the majority, will stay with me, because I think this may interest you as well. In fact, the point I have been thinking about has to do exactly with the fact that, in the current political epoch, we can’t afford to let our personal interests and attachments, such as our nationality, dictate our political thought and activity, that is, our “praxis.” For the first time in recent history, the very notion of progressive politics itself may be under attack.

Briefly, there has been a social democratic party in Canada since 1932. Its original program was a cooperative, people-based, variant of FDR’s New Deal. Over the seven decades of its life, along with changing its name from the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) to the New Democratic Party (NDP), it has jettisoned much of its original program, including nationalization of basic industries. It has formed many provincial governments, but it has never gained enough seats in the Parliament to form the federal government. Still, Canada owes much of its social infrastructure to this party’s activity at the provincial and federal levels. These include a universal health insurance system, workers compensation, pensions, unemployment insurance, and so on.

The NDP has been Canada’s economic “system of checks and balances.” It has been the conscience of the Canadian political system, in that (1) it has helped to rein in the more outrageous tendencies of Canada’s various conservative parties, and (2) it has forced the middle-of-the-road Liberal Party of Canada to try to attract and co-opt the NDP’s natural constituency through imitating the NDP’s platform during elections, and returning to its usual do-nothing shift-with-the-wind posture once elections are over.

Canada’s conservative and moderate parties are guided by the NDP’s spirit, but they don’t enjoy being so guided. Still, they have no choice. The NDP represents the political, social, and economic aspirations of a very significant section of the Canadian population. In the same way that the NDP’s political activity is shaped by what it can wrest from the governing parties, the activity of the other parties comes to be shaped by political maneuvers whose aim is to avoid giving in to the NDP’s demands.

For instance, the former Reform Party (an ultra-conservative party, by Canadian standards) based its original platform around the notions of “fiscal responsibility,” and also accountability and recall of elected members of Parliaments. Such standards, although they sound fine, would in fact lead to paralysis of the federal government, making the realization of the NDP’s objectives impossible.

The Liberal Party, on the other hand, has always portrayed itself as the utmost in social progress that the country can afford, hence making the NDP’s platform appear unrealistic and utopian.

Until recently, the NDP fought its battles on two distinct fronts, against conservatism and liberalism. I believe the two fronts have recently merged with one another. In other words, a kind of collusion and collaboration seems to be in the works between the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party, with the aim of eliminating their “conscience” once and for all. What is even more significant is that each of the two parties seems to be willing almost to wager its own survival on the outcome of the contest.

In the latest federal elections, in 2004, the Liberal government was reduced to minority status in the Parliament. Currently, the Conservative Party is trying to bring the government down. The NDP, on the other hand, is trying to prop the government up, at least until the proposed budget, a very progressive ones by Liberal standards, is passed.

All this is normal politics. This time, though, something is curiously different about it. The Conservative Party’s leader, Stephen Harper, until last week a staunch neo-conservative, has suddenly developed a social conscience. On medicare, the Kyoto accord, and some other important social issues, Harper now sounds like an NDP’er. On the other hand, Paul Martin’s Liberal government, having proposed a budget that is almost like a hypothetical NDP budget, and having persuaded Jack Layton, the NDP leader, to prop up the government by offering to increase social spending, has gone back to stressing “fiscal responsibility” and tax cuts for big corporations as the lifeblood of sound economics. It is as if the two major parties had come to an agreement regarding what good governance entails, and hence there were no need for a third party to needle them on. They have managed to make the NDP seem redundant.

I do believe that a similar process is visible in many other countries, including the United States. The battles between mainstream political parties are pushing the truly progressive forces in society onto the sidelines. This, I suggest, is not an accidental outcome, but rather a purpose of the exercise.

Under these circumstances, the unity of progressive forces assumes primary importance. We can no longer afford to let the political establishment exploit the fissures within the progressive movement to destroy it. We cannot be just for medicare, or just for the environment, and so on. If we are divided, we will lose everything, because social issues, to the major parties, are just levers to get them elected. They have no deep abiding interest in anything that benefits the majority.

That is why I think progressive politics can no longer be personal politics. My proposed slogan for the current period would be: “I am not you, but we are both against …” The other side of the issue is that things are so desperate that we desperately need allies, and cannot afford to alienate anyone by our orthodoxy or system of priorities/preferences/issues.

The mainstream liberal’s prescription is: “if you don’t want to be a part of the problem, be a part of the solution,” that is, recycle and so on. But if one is only a part of the solution, one is in fact helping to perpetuate the problem, especially in an age when the possibility of cooperative social solutions to problems is being denied. What is needed is not piecemeal solutions, but rather the removal of the problematic itself. And that can only be achieved through unity.

The other day I met the infamous who’s—in a major newspaper, of all places. Who’s doesn’t get around nearly as much as it’s does, but that makes it all the more scary when you do run into him. Who's and it's are close relatives, by the way, as they are both rooted in an inability to understand what the apostrophe is and what it does. I had got quite used to meeting it’s, even in supposedly professionally edited publications. But who’s? I had not seen who’s outside of e-mails and such that I had assumed had been written by particularly illiterate individuals—that is, until our fateful meeting yesterday.

When I think back, it seems I began to meet it’s in the early 1980s. I don’t recall having seen him in the ‘70s at all, or at any time before that. So what phenomenon of the early 1980s paralleled the birth of the new illiteracy, possibly pointing to its origin? I have no ready answer to that question, but that does seem to be the time when a large majority of American voters voted for Reagan. And Thatcher and Clark, both Conservatives, had just been elected in the UK and Canada, respectively. Hmm… And, before I go any further, I want to stress that I am not at all referring to dyslexic or intellectually challenged people. Such people can’t help making mistakes. I am talking about "normal" people who can learn the correct way of writing certain words, but who won’t. All I can say is that, in my experience, illiteracisms such as these words (what else can one call them?) do seem to be associated with a certain kind of mentality. It is the mentality that never tries to acquire a deep and clear understanding of the world around it. Rather, it lives with myths and legends handed down to it from its forebears, never bothering to get a clear understanding of even those myths and legends, let alone to question them.

As a public service, then, and hopeful that my meager endeavour may help usher in a new Age of Enlightenment…LOL…here is a list of some of these illiteracisms, along with corrections thereto:

1/ It’s: This abbreviation has two possible meanings, and those are its only possible meanings. You noticed I just wrote "its only possible meanings"? That is because it would have been wrong to say "it’s only possible meanings". Why? Because, as I said, it’s has two meanings, and two meanings only. It can be an abbreviation for “it is” or for “it has.” It has no other common meanings or usages.

2/ Who’s: Again, who’s can mean one of two things, and only two things: “who is” or “who has.” When you write “Who’s blog is this?” you actually mean to say “Whose blog is this?” Yes, whose, NOT who’s. Remember that.

3/ They’re / their / there (as well as your/you're): Here we run into a veritable forest of illiteracisms. It seems entire populations of English speaking people are unaware that these are three completely different words, as evidenced by the fact that they use them interchangeably on a daily basis (one of them is two words, by the way). I won’t go into the details of what each of them means, as it would probably be a futile effort. If an adult didn’t learn their differing meanings while still in school, it’s too late to begin now. I have to end this post on a pessimistic note. People who don’t know, and won’t find out, the difference between “they’re” and “their” will surely never learn to look beneath the lies that their governments tell them.

* The title of this post refers to the way some people would write "Who's there?"

Another sign of the end of “true” religiosity that was discussed in the comments to my last post is the selection of yet another pope on apparently purely political grounds. One indication of this is the fact that for the second time in a row, after a gap of five hundred years, a non-Italian has been selected as pope. When a five-hundred year old tradition is broken twice in a row, especially by an intrinsically conservative institution such as the Catholic Church, you know something fishy is going on. Pope John Paul II’s primary credential was his anti-communism. He was put on St. Peter’s throne in order to fight for American interests in Eastern Europe, and to make sure the Cold War ends with the US as the undisputed and undisputable winner. He performed his mission in an admirable manner, surpassing all expectations. Benedict XVI’s qualifications, on the other hand, make him suitable for the new phase of the American Empire. Like all Bush appointees, he has impeccable ultra-Right credentials. In the 1960’s he abandoned liberalism in horror on realizing the risk of real freedom inherent in democratic institutions. He probably has a dual mission. One, to turn a blind eye to US atrocities around the world. John Paul II, admittedly, was not quite perfect in the art of turning a blind eye. Second, to re-interpret every atrocity as a good thing. The idea with John Paul II’s selection was that he would fight, on the “spiritual” field, the battle that was on the verge of being lost on the political field. Benedict XVI may have a similar mission, as Europe’s relationship of vassalage to the US has been subject to political and economic threats. The conclave of cardinals that chooses the Pope has become obsolete. From now on, the task should be assigned to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee. The Nobel people are much more experienced in the art of selecting winners on the basis of political expediency, as opposed to merit, justice … or peace.

Let’s put metaphysical and eschatological considerations aside for a moment, and ask a simple question: Exactly what is religion—exactly today? Exactly what function does it play in today’s world, and whose interests does it serve? To avoid unnecessary complexity, I’ll limit myself to Christianity, though, in my opinion, these ideas, with some modifications, probably apply to other religions as well.

I don’t think it is difficult to see that (a) religion today does not play the role that it played in the Middle Ages; and (b) religion today does not play the role that it played in the nineteenth century.

It is impossible to imagine the medieval period while leaving out religion. Religion was an integral element of the medieval order of things that made the continued existence of the then-existing socio-political system possible.

Religion had a much-reduced function in the nineteenth-century European society, primarily because of the social and intellectual advancements of the Enlightenment period. Society no longer depended on it for its sheer existence. Rather, it gained a supporting role, if you will. It became the comforter of the exploited masses of the Industrial Revolution, or, as Marx put it in a passage that is rarely quoted in full, and is, therefore, frequently misunderstood:

“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”

That was religion’s function then. Today, in the Western industrial or “post-industrial” countries, religion is no longer an opiate. The poor suffering classes that needed "opiates" have largely disappeared in the rich countries. Religion is now something different. Our pain and suffering today, when they exist, are primarily of the mind. And it is our minds that search desperately for release from their new burdens. We seek release from the knowledge that, despite two centuries of rapid progress, humanity has only succeeded in turning itself into a new assortment of barbarians. Humanity has miserably failed to solve the social problem. Neighbour hates neighbour, and the human species is destroying its own environmental conditions of existence. The nineteenth-century’s physical torments have been replaced by the twenty-first-century’s mental torments. And the new torments are at least as unbearable as the old ones.

What does a person do when faced with unbearable circumstances? The person tries to regress, psychologically, to an earlier, more primitive, more idyllic, state of consciousness. In other words, the person’s mentality regresses to that of a child. Under such conditions, we reach for false values, because society has failed to provide us with real ones.

As illustrations, I will refer to two recent events with religious overtones.

In the Terri Schiavo case, a kind of mass psychosis seemed to overtake a segment of American society. Thousands of people kept insisting on treating a dead body as though it were a living human being. They were play acting, in almost exactly the same way that children do. And their play acting, while it lasted, was as real to them as children's is to them.

During the weeks before and after the Pope’s death, the whole world seemed to be in the grip of mass psychosis. Oblivious of his actual legacy of reactionary values that have brought misery and death to millions, people chose to concentrate, like children, on "his message of peace." They chose to see him as a father figure, blameless and strong.

Today, religion is the lollipop of the people.

These are very confusing times for Republicans. Sure, they have finally found and “re-elected” a President who is just stupid enough and pig-headed enough to be willing to try to implement the pure unadulterated agenda of the Right. At the same time, though, they are learning that the world is a lot more complicated than they ever imagined. As I mentioned in response to a recent comment, the US Right has a tribal mentality that attributes the guilt or innocence of individuals to the groups they are a member of, and vice versa. In the case of the 9/11 attacks, for instance, the US Right managed to implicate the entire Moslem world in the crimes of a couple of dozen individuals. It is becoming more and more difficult for the Right to apply its simplistic mentality to the real world. It used to be there were just two tribes in the world: the American Tribe (the good folks) and the Rest-of-the-World Tribe (the people who were trying, with American “assistance,” to remake themselves in the image of the “good folks”). The American Tribe was further subdivided into God-Fearing Republicans and Those-Awful Democrats, though it was not clear how the American Tribe (the good folks) had come to include the tribe of Those-Awful Democrats. What had always been an unquestionable article of faith, though, was that the Rest of the World Tribe (or ROWT, for short) was just (to use the President's technical terminology) “a group of folks” of varying shades of evil. The ROWT had a gray-hued Christian component that was on the path to salvation, as well as a completely dark and heathen Moslem component desperately awaiting the gift of salvation that would surely be delivered some day by American carpetbaggers. By the way, the US Right was not, and is not, aware of the existence of religions other than those two. (The latter point should not be as surprising at it may seem. Recently I found out, to my astonishment, that many "educated" Americans think Canada is a French-speaking country. If you don't believe this, just ask a group of Americans what language most Canadians speak on a daily basis. When someone does not know what language their neighbours speak, one can hardly expect them to know about the intricacies and diversity of Asian, African and aboriginal religions. Immediately after 9/11, right-wing hooligans attacked many Sikh temples and individuals because, you know, anyone wearing a turban is a Moslem, right?) The “Iraq thing” has complicated the picture for the Right. If all Moslems are one tribal block of evil people, they ask, then who are these Shias and Sunnis? Are they both evil? If they are both evil, why is there antagonism between them? Very confusing ... No matter how confusing it may make things for the American Right, world affairs cannot be approached and understood in tribal terms. The character and aspirations of each individual are unique to that individual, even though he/she may be a member of this or that group, or actually of many different groups at the same time. While most Iraqi Shias may be in agreement with one another about some issues, and most Iraqi Sunnis may be in agreement with one another about some of those same issues and other issues, nearly every Iraqi, as an individual, wants one thing above all, which is for the Americans to leave. The rest is the business of Iraqis, and of Iraqis alone. No-one else, least of all American Republicans, can understand or have any worthwhile opinions on the concerns of individual Iraqis.

On December 7, 1941, Japan made what would today be called a preemptive attack against US naval facilities at Pearl Harbor. The attack, judged by today’s post-ethical American standards, was quite justified. After all, the US forces posed a clear and present threat to Japanese interests. The next day, Franklin Roosevelt addressed the US Congress, calling the date of the attack “a date which will live in infamy.” If the Japanese attack against Pearl Harbor was “infamous,” what would be an appropriate adjective to describe the US attack on Iraq that commenced on March 19, 2003? Iraq posed no threat whatsoever to any US interests, except for Bush's interest in taking control of its petroleum resources. Iraq had committed no act of aggression of any kind against the United States. Far from it. Iraq has been the clear victim all along. It had already suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties through the war imposed on it by Bush, Sr. It had suffered a dozen years of sanctions and continual US and British bombardment of its infrastructure, leading to deaths of half a million Iraqi children and many tens of thousands of others. Today, the only certainty regarding Iraq's future may be the fact that the United States will refuse to ever let it be free of the dominance of American profiteers. Iraq is now a ruined wasteland, with an obliterated past and no future.

One difference between a book by any respectable political theorist and Hitler's Mein Kampf is that the scholar tries to form arguments that make sense, while Hitler tries to make the reader imagine he is reading arguments that make sense. One does not learn any rational arguments from reading Hitler’s book, because it is not intended to say anything that corresponds to reality or makes any rational sense. It is only intended to manipulate the reader’s emotions, so as to overpower the reader's reasoning faculty. What one does learn from reading such literature is the fascist method of distorting truth to fit a particular purpose. This in itself can be quite enlightening, because a conscious reading of such work can help the reader grow more aware of a fascist author's motives. It can also help the reader recognize similar tactics when they are employed outside a strictly "fascistic" context.

The influence of fascism has been so pervasive that it has become an unconscious part of our civilization. Official Nazism and fascism in Germany and Italy were destroyed. Their methodology of ruling over the minds of the population, though, were lessons that the Allied powers and their servile news media and pundits made their own. To find writing that is inspired by fascism, all you have to do is turn to nearly any mainstream news outlet.

An essential cornerstone of fascist propaganda is the fact that almost any word or concept has both a rational and an emotive significance. Thus “freedom,” for instance, is both the objective state of empowerment that allows a person or group to overcome bounds and obstacles, as well as the emotional state that accompanies the consciousness of not being bound. Fascist propaganda uses these two distinct concepts interchangeably, in order to generate confusion in the audience’s mind between one and the other. The end result, and the final purpose, is that the feeling supplants the concept, and the need for reality is disposed of.

A number of specific tactics are employed to manipulate the emotions and hence neutralize the intellect.

One fascist propaganda tactic is to use different words to describe the same phenomenon, depending on whose interests are being served. Another variant of this tactic is to call things by a name that suits the powers that be, rather than by a name that is an objective description of the objective reality. Thus the US invading army in Iraq are “liberators,” whereas the Syrian peacekeeping forces in Lebanon are “occupiers.”

Another fascist tactic is to make opponents appear to be saying something other than what the opponents are actually saying. This is accomplished through the ascription of negative emotive concepts to the words of the opponents. Hence any criticism of the policies of the State of Israel amounts to callous anti-semitism, and even to denial of the Holocaust.

Another tactic is to pretend to be humanitarian in order to appeal to the audience on an emotional level. Hence all brutality ever perpetrated by the US Government has always been, in fact, for the good of the victims. And it turns out that Bush, after all, was just using weapons of mass destruction as a pretext to liberate the Iraqi people.

Another tactic related to the one above is to pretend to be speaking from some moral high ground. The only purpose that the Bush clan, father and son, have ever had in Iraq has been to get their hands on its oil. Together, they are responsible for more than a million deaths in Iraq (including the half a million children who died as a result of sanctions). The actual nature of the Bush dynasty's project has nearly been buried along with the Iraqi dead. Now Bush Jr travels the world as its Saviour, a veritable Second Coming.

The basis of Margaret Thatcher's belief that "There is no such thing as society" was the Right's interpretation of society's general interest (cf Rousseau). To the Right, the general interest is a mere aggregate of individual interests (cf Plato’s discussion of the character of the citizens and the character of the state). [These days, I find that going back to the old philosophers helps me connect to the roots of social issues] Conversely, the Right assumes that whenever someone defends a political position, it must be due to a personal interest. The latter is an instance of the failure to differentiate between the personal and the social, an issue that Rousseau (unsuccessfully) and Marx (successfully) dealt with. Another instance of this failure, which may have touched many of us personally, is that conservatives take liberal criticism personally, while liberals generally don't take conservative criticism personally. The Right cannot understand the fact that the opinions a person expresses reflect the reality that the person is faced with, rather than his/her personality. For the Left, there are people, and then there are values afterwards. For the Right, values subsist in a substratum, independently of people and their lived experience.

The above fallacy is the root of the Right's whole "philosophy" of values, which is founded on a confusion between what is right and what is good. Real values are deduced from a process of reasoning on what is good. In other words, values are something that each of us comes to have due to having gone through a series of reasoning processes. They are our personal ethics. They are not, and cannot be, dictated to us by others or by society. The concept of what is "right," on the other hand, is based on conscience or emotions, that is, it is ultimately dictated to us by society as morality. An example should help to clarify this. A bill is to be reintroduced in the US Congress "that would require doctors who perform abortions after 20 weeks into a pregnancy to tell their patients that the fetus feels pain. Doctors must then offer anesthesia for the fetus." This is the Right's idea of "values." In fact, this has nothing to do with values. As much as it may disturb us to think of the pain that a 20-week fetus may suffer, the issue cannot be settled by an appeal to our emotions. Rather, the debate must revolve around the idea of what is the good thing to do in this situation. That can only be decided by including all the factors that bear on the situation, including the mother's health, her rights, her situation, and the social aspects of the question. Pain, by itself, is not an argument. If pain were an argument, it could be argued that anyone who suffers incurable pain should be euthanized.

I think I owe an explanation to the regular readers of this blog about the recent comment spam attack. This blog has been subjected to a spam attack by an individual who calls himself Grey, as well as by a number of his blogging associates. His blog is at www.sixty-six.org (see his post of Feb. 16). This individual is part of a group of four or five persons (with BJ, Mort, Zealott, and Zeke, and another one or two minor players) who, on the basis of my experience with them in the past two months, have made it their mission to attack blogs critical of the current US Administration. In other words, they try to chill critical activity by bullying the critics. These individuals have repeatedly attacked my blog with irrelevant and offensive comments, many of which I have duly deleted. They would then add the original comments again, sometimes adding the same comment to several different posts. In the Feb. 16 post on his blog, Grey says he will keep posting his comment until I reply to him. I have no idea what makes him feel he has a right to do this. I will, of course, not respond to what amounts to blackmail and coercion. I have stated on my blog's heading that I would delete "rude" comments. When I delete the comments of these individuals, they flood me with objections, to the effect that their comments were not "rude," meaning they did not contain obscene words. I am sure every literate person knows what is meant by the word "rude" in this context. It does not just refer to writing that contains gutter language. It also includes writing whose purpose is only to offend, without adding anything to the conversation. I have never deleted any comments that had been offered with a sincere wish to debate a point. You will find such critical comments under the latest post, signed by "Flemish American" and "cantseefade." They both expressed views opposite to my own, but in a constructive manner, and received a reply. You will find many similar cases throughout this blog. Notwithstanding all this, I have, in any case, the right to state my beliefs, whatever they may be, and to talk to and listen to whoever I wish, and also NOT to talk to and listen to whoever I wish. This fundamental freedom, regrettably, seems to have been one of the victims of the current mentality and the erosion of civil and human rights in the US. It appears that many Americans now believe they have a right to force people to listen to them. In the end, I have decided not to delete this gang's comments anymore. The reason is not just that they have forced this course of action, but also because I am sure that, in the minds of the readers, they will be hoist by their own petard. I had been saving them some embarrassment by deleting their comments. All of their comments, with the possible exception of the ones signed by the gang member who calls himself Zealott (with two T's), are free of any intellectual content, hence failing the first test set by this blog.

The Left (or the liberals, to use the US term) has been greatly concerned about the long-term effects of political division in society. The political division has, of course, been greatly exacerbated by the alienating policies of the current US administration. The liberals, being liberals, see division as unfavourable, that is, as something that one should try to reduce, even at the cost of compromising one's own principles. The hope is that attempts at dialogue with the Right may help bring them to one's own side. The experience of the last four years has demonstrated the exact opposite. Attempts at dialogue with the Right are interpreted as weakness, and leave them even more confirmed in their beliefs. It is clearly impossible to convert the extreme segments of the Right, although the less extreme segments may be open to seeing the light. However, the latter will see the light only if we remain steadfast in our praxis, and refuse to make unprincipled concessions.

Another aspect of this issue that has worried the Left is that each camp seems to talk only amongst themselves. There does not seem to be much of any kind of communication between the Right and the Left. I would again suggest that this is not necessarily the end of the world. The more we are confronted by invective and irrationality from the Right, the more convinced should we become that we are on the side of truth and justice. The fact that they hate us so much is proof positive that we have been effective, and confirms that we should continue and intensify our activities. And talking amongst ourselves is the best way to build coalitions and reinforce each other's efforts. Just consider the fact that, four years ago, there was a clear distinction between "left" and "liberal" in American political discourse. Today, that distinction has, for all practical purposes, disappeared.

I have put together a list of the primary referrers (to BushBlackout.com) from around the world who dedicated their Websites to this campaign today.

In a well-intentioned post on the "Bad Attitudes" blog, Moe Blue points out what he sees as a "collective amnesia" in the Democratic Party as far as its basic values are concerned. As a reminder, he then goes on to list what the Party has stood for during the last century. I felt something was lacking while I was reading through his list. Although, as I said, he is well-intentioned in that he wants the Party to halt its right-ward drift, he in fact demonstrates exactly why Social Democracy has continued to drift right-ward in the last hundred years. Humanism nourished SD's original vision, and humanism calls for an absolute and unconditional value system. Stressing the values that Moe lists is not the remedy for SD's ailment, because those are not even values. They are the program that SD has developed for itself over the said period. They are, therefore, conditional and instrumental. The "collective amnesia" should instead refer to the fact that Social Democrats have forgotten that their original stance consisted of a set of items with intrinsic, unconditional, and non-instrumental value. The Right has no problem thinking of what it stands for as having intrinsic value, so why not the Left? The following is Moe's list (the text within quotation marks), together with my parenthetical indications of the intrinsic values that have been abandoned along the way:

1-"Give the poor and impoverished a hand up to lift them out of poverty because more people with more money makes our economy grow." (And not because doing so is a primary responsibility of a just society)

2-"Guarantee that all citizens are equal before the law because justice is the only path to social stability." (And not because justice is a good in itself)

3-"Promote science and education because they are the foundations of prosperity." (And not because having an educated and cultured citizenry has intrinsic value)

4-"Maintain strong alliances around the world because true security comes from being surrounded by friends, not enemies." (And not because peace is an indivisible aspect of human happiness)

5-"Create, enforce, and protect the rights of workers because America is not about enriching the few while crushing the many." (And not because there is nothing that should take precedence over the rights of producers of wealth, that is, the workers)

6-"Protect the environment because our children will have to live in the world we leave them." (And not because the environment has intrinsic value independently of whether there are human beings around or not)

7-"Keep the government out of the lives of citizens because the most fundamental right we have is the right to be left alone." (And not because the government's job description does not include a right to interfere in the lives of the citizens)

Of course, perhaps a more fundamental decision for the Democratic Party is whether it wants to be a Social Democratic party in the first place, or whether it wants to languish in its New Deal legacy. The New Deal, to those who know what it was really about, was fundamentally anti-worker and anti-progressive.

Been out hunting
Bagged their first kill.
Commander had told them: Don't shoot
Till you see the whites of their eyes.

Been shooting women with babies
Been shooting women holding babies
Just in case the babies
were shielding weapons.

They are real men now.
Just to be on the safe side
They shoot women holding babies
Just in case.

They see
The whites of their eyes:
The large eyes
And the little ones.

Iraqi women carrying babies in their arms are more likely to be shot by American soldiers than are other women. Such women are suspected of hiding weapons behind the babies.

Bush apologists love to go on about the beheadings in Iraq as soon as you bring up the subject of the responsibility of US soldiers for Abu Ghraib and, much more seriously, the civilian casualties in Fallujah. But are the same standards to be applied to professional soldiers as to individuals who are, after all, "terrorists" and "insurgents"? There is no logical equivalence between the killings by US soldiers and the killings by the "insurgents." This is not just for the basic reason given above, but also because of the deeper reason that the US has been massacring members of a completely legitimate resistance movement. There is no ethical equivalence between the actions of a member of a resistance movement and those of a soldier of an occupying army. Even the Nazis in France didn't use the excuse of the presence of members of the French Resistance in French cities to destroy those cities and massacre their populations. A parallel case to the above situation has been going on in the Middle East in the American proxy state of Israel, where the Israeli government has for years used the attacks by members of the Palestinian resistance movement against Israeli targets to rationalize its own attacks against innocent Palestinian civilians.

It's curious how US history keeps repeating itself, without anyone learning anything from these repetitions. Used to be anyone who defended African-Americans against those who persecuted, tortured, and lynched them was called a N... lover. Those doing the name-calling did not feel the least remorse for any of the atrocities committed against black people. They hated the people who defended the blacks, though, because they were afraid that talking about the atrocities may, God forbid, stir someone's conscience. The same thing is going on with Iraq. The right wants as many Iraqis (or Moslems in general) to be killed as possible, and they don't care how or why. All they ask is that no-one talk about it. And whoever does talk about it faces the right's full arsenal of invective and worse... And yet the right gets indignant when it is labelled Nazi or Fascist! I could name any number of "conservative" icons who have called, either explicitly or implicitly (they are very clever that way), for the eradication of all Moslems (all 1.2 billion of them), but I won't bother. Their filth is already all over the Internet and the newsmedia for anyone who wants to look the hideous face of American "conservatism" in the eye. And one doesn't even need to look at the "icons" anyway, as any American can testify on this issue on the basis of what he/she hears at work from co-workers, or hears coming out of his/her own mouth.