There is no rhyme or reason/ For any of this slash & burn/ Everybody gets a season/ This time round it's Brazil's turn (With apologies to Alistair Hulett)
***
Top analysis from James Petras: Trump's alliance with body-choppers, death squads & child-killers: Saudi Arabia, Brazil & Israel:
"In recent weeks the White House has embraced the contemporary version of the world's most murderous regimes. President Trump has embraced the Saudi Arabian 'Prince of Death' Mohammad bin Salman who has graduated from chopping hands and heads in public plazas to dismembering bodies in overseas consulates - the case of Jamal Khashoggi.
"The White House warmly greeted the electoral success of Brazilian Presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro, ardent champion of torturers, military dictators, death squads and free marketeers.
"President Trump grovels, grunts and glories before Israel, as his spiritual guide Benjamin Netanyahu celebrates the Sabbath with the weekly murders and maiming of hundreds of unarmed Palestinians, especially youngsters.
"These are President Trump's 'natural allies'. They share his values and interests while each retains their particular method of disposing of the cadavers of adversaries and dissenters.
"We will proceed to discuss the larger political-economic context in which the trio of monsters operate...
"President Trump's intimate ties with the world's most unsavory regimes flows from several strategic interests. In the case of Saudi Arabia, it includes military bases; the financing of international mercenaries and terrorists; multi-billion dollar arms sales; oil profits; and covert alliances with Israel against Iran, Syria and Yemen. In order to secure these Saudi assets, the White House is more than willing to assume certain socio-political costs. The US eagerly sells weapons and provides advisers to Saudi's genocidal invasion, murder and starvation of millions of Yemenis. The White House alliance against Yemen has few monetary rewards or political advantages as well as negative propaganda value. However, with few other client states in the region, Washington makes do with Prince Salman 'the salami slicer.' The US ignores Saudi financing of Islamic terrorists against US allies in Asia (the Philippines) and Afghanistan as well as rival thugs in Syria and Libya. Alas, when a pro-US collaborator like Washington Post journalist and US resident Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated, President Trump was forced to adopt the pretense of an investigation in order to distance himself from the Riyadh mafia. He subsequently exonerated butcher boy bin Salman: he invented a flagrant lie - blaming 'rogue elements' in charge of the interrogation, - read torture.
"President Trump celebrated the electoral victory of Brazilian neo-liberal fascist Jair Bolsonaro because he checks all the right boxes: he promises to slash economic regulations and corporate taxes for multi-national corporations. He is an ardent ally of Washington's economic war against Venezuela and Cuba. He promises to arm right-wing death squads and militarize the police. He pledges to be a loyal follower of US war policies abroad. However, Bolsonaro cannot support Trump's trade war especially against China which is the market for almost 40% of Brazil's agro-exports. This is especially the case since agro-business bosses are Bolsonaro's principal economic and congressional supporters. Given Washington's limited influence in the rest of Latin America, Brazil's neo-liberal fascist regime acts as Trump's principal ally.
"Israel is the White House's mentor and chief of operations in the Middle East, as well as a strategic military ally. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel has seized and colonized most of the West Bank and militarily occupied the rest of Palestine; jailed and tortured tens of thousands of political dissidents; surrounded and starved over a million Gaza residents; imposed ethno-religious conditions for citizenship in Israel, denying basic rights for over 20% of the Arab residents of the self-styled 'Jewish state'.
"Netanyahu has bombed hundreds of Syrian cities, towns, airports and bases in support of ISIS terrorists and Western mercenaries. Israel intervenes in US elections, buys Congressional votes and secures White House recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state.
"Zionists in North America and Great Britain act as a 'fifth column' securing unanimous favorable mass media coverage of its apartheid policies.
"Prime Minister Netanyahu secures unconditional US financial and political support and the most advanced weaponry.
"In exchange Washington considers itself privileged to serve as foot soldiers for Israeli targeted wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen and Somalia... Israel collaborates with the US in defending Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. Netanyahu and his Zionist allies in the White House succeeded in reversing the nuclear agreement with Iran and imposing new and harsher economic sanctions.
"Israel has its own agenda: it defies President Trump's sanctions policies against Russia and its trade war with China. Israel eagerly engages in the sales of arms and high-tech innovations to Beijing." (petras.lahaine.org, 16/10/18)
***
In addition to his slashing and burning of Brazil, Bolsonaro, a throwback to the Brazilian military dictatorship of 1964-1985, has declared, on US television, that the first country he will visit as a Christian will be Israel.
The final word I'll leave to this 29/10 tweet of Netanyahu:
"I spoke this evening with the president-elect of Brazil, @jairbolsonaro. I congratulated him on his victory. I told him I'm certain his election will lead to a great friendship between our peoples and a strengthening of BrazilIsrael ties. We are waiting for his visit to Israel!"
Showing posts with label James Petras. Show all posts
Showing posts with label James Petras. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 31, 2018
Sunday, October 1, 2017
Mearsheimer & Walt's 'Israel Lobby' 10 Years On
If Spain had the Inquisition, the United States has the Israel lobby. Such is the fear of 'the lobby' in the United States that the classic book on the subject, Mearsheimer and Walt's The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy (2007) almost failed to appear:
"The two men actually gave up on the article and book years before it was published because doors kept closing... Mearsheimer spoke about the idea first at the American Political Science Association meetings in Boston in 2002; and a friend said the Atlantic wanted to commission an article on that very subject. The Atlantic magazine assigned Walt and Mearsheimer in 2002. Then it got cold feet and killed the piece in early 2005. At that time, Walt said, the two scholars thought no other outlet in the United States would publish it, but they could flesh it out as a 'short book,' so they consulted a 'number' of publishers... We got what you would call polite interest but nothing you could call enthusiasm. At one point we basically decided to drop the project entirely... After that, though, an editor who had a copy of the piece showed it to a scholar at UCLA who reached out to Mearsheimer and said the London Review of Books might be interested. The LRB version was eventually published in March 2006, and 'provoked an immediate firestorm,' Walt said. Ironically, once it provoked that firestorm, suddenly publishers... recognized that there was a product people were interested in and suddenly they were contacting us and offering us book contracts." ('The lobby is still as powerful as ever' - John Mearsheimer, ten years after publishing The Israel Lobby, Philip Weiss, mondoweiss.net, 25/9/17)
The comment by CitizenC in the thread following Weiss's post is a fair assessment of the book:
"The book and article were indeed important landmarks, and brought the issue into the mainstream. But the authors pulled their punches in certain ways. They did not examine the first chapter of the story, the 1940s, when the nascent IL overwhelmed the opposition of the military and diplomatic establishments, and forced support for the partition of Palestine and a Jewish state on the US government. They also claimed that the IL 'is just another lobby, doing its job in US interest group politics.' This was in part defensiveness about the charge of anti-Semitism, which they addressed.
"The IL is not like other lobbies. It has operated at and beyond the margins of the law since its founding. In its early years it moved adroitly thru various legal gambits and incorporations to evade prosecution under foreign agent laws. The Fulbright hearings of the early 1960s forced the founding of AIPAC by existing IL personnel, and were the end of US sovereignty in the foreign agent area, as far as Israel was concerned. Grant Smith has shown all this in an important series of books based on documents unearthed with FOIA. He feels that the USG has essentially lost the ability to enforce the Foreign Agent Registration Act where Israel is concerned.
"Much of Mearsheimer and Walt's defensiveness was due to the refusal of the left, led by Chomsky, to consider the issue, imposing instead the [Israel as] 'strategic asset' dogma. Chomsky wrote some trivial dismissal in response to the article, and ignored the book. The left is unchanged since Mearsheimer and Walt. The IL argument is still viciously attacked as anti-Semitism, notably by Jewish Voice for Peace. Ten years after the article and book appeared, Chomsky's friend Irene Gendzier tried to impose the 'strategic asset' argument on the 40s, in a risibly weak book.
"The IL has also been addressed by diplomats, politicians and academics since the 40s. Paul Findley, George Ball and Michael Cohen are examples. Nonetheless, Mearsheimer and Walt gave the issue renewed prominence, made a major contribution, and paid a price, as Phil says."
I would add to CitizenC's list in the above paragraph - and highly recommend - James Petras' The Power of Israel in the United States (2006).
"The two men actually gave up on the article and book years before it was published because doors kept closing... Mearsheimer spoke about the idea first at the American Political Science Association meetings in Boston in 2002; and a friend said the Atlantic wanted to commission an article on that very subject. The Atlantic magazine assigned Walt and Mearsheimer in 2002. Then it got cold feet and killed the piece in early 2005. At that time, Walt said, the two scholars thought no other outlet in the United States would publish it, but they could flesh it out as a 'short book,' so they consulted a 'number' of publishers... We got what you would call polite interest but nothing you could call enthusiasm. At one point we basically decided to drop the project entirely... After that, though, an editor who had a copy of the piece showed it to a scholar at UCLA who reached out to Mearsheimer and said the London Review of Books might be interested. The LRB version was eventually published in March 2006, and 'provoked an immediate firestorm,' Walt said. Ironically, once it provoked that firestorm, suddenly publishers... recognized that there was a product people were interested in and suddenly they were contacting us and offering us book contracts." ('The lobby is still as powerful as ever' - John Mearsheimer, ten years after publishing The Israel Lobby, Philip Weiss, mondoweiss.net, 25/9/17)
The comment by CitizenC in the thread following Weiss's post is a fair assessment of the book:
"The book and article were indeed important landmarks, and brought the issue into the mainstream. But the authors pulled their punches in certain ways. They did not examine the first chapter of the story, the 1940s, when the nascent IL overwhelmed the opposition of the military and diplomatic establishments, and forced support for the partition of Palestine and a Jewish state on the US government. They also claimed that the IL 'is just another lobby, doing its job in US interest group politics.' This was in part defensiveness about the charge of anti-Semitism, which they addressed.
"The IL is not like other lobbies. It has operated at and beyond the margins of the law since its founding. In its early years it moved adroitly thru various legal gambits and incorporations to evade prosecution under foreign agent laws. The Fulbright hearings of the early 1960s forced the founding of AIPAC by existing IL personnel, and were the end of US sovereignty in the foreign agent area, as far as Israel was concerned. Grant Smith has shown all this in an important series of books based on documents unearthed with FOIA. He feels that the USG has essentially lost the ability to enforce the Foreign Agent Registration Act where Israel is concerned.
"Much of Mearsheimer and Walt's defensiveness was due to the refusal of the left, led by Chomsky, to consider the issue, imposing instead the [Israel as] 'strategic asset' dogma. Chomsky wrote some trivial dismissal in response to the article, and ignored the book. The left is unchanged since Mearsheimer and Walt. The IL argument is still viciously attacked as anti-Semitism, notably by Jewish Voice for Peace. Ten years after the article and book appeared, Chomsky's friend Irene Gendzier tried to impose the 'strategic asset' argument on the 40s, in a risibly weak book.
"The IL has also been addressed by diplomats, politicians and academics since the 40s. Paul Findley, George Ball and Michael Cohen are examples. Nonetheless, Mearsheimer and Walt gave the issue renewed prominence, made a major contribution, and paid a price, as Phil says."
I would add to CitizenC's list in the above paragraph - and highly recommend - James Petras' The Power of Israel in the United States (2006).
Saturday, October 3, 2015
James Petras on Jewish Supremacism 3
Conclusion
"The record provides no historical basis for the claims of Jewish Supremacists.
"What has been cited as the disproportionate 'Jewish genius' turns out to be a two-edged sword - demonstrating the best and the worst.
"Claiming a monopoly on high academic achievement must be expanded to owning up to the Jewish authors of the worst financial and foreign policy disasters - they too are 'high achievers'.
"Donations from financial billionaires, all 'geniuses', have financed the war crimes of the Israeli state and made possible the expansion of violent Jewish settlers throughout occupied Palestine - spreading misery and displacement for millions.
"In fairness, the most notorious Jewish swindler in contemporary America was even-handed: 'Bernie' Madoff swindled Jews and Goys. Hollywood moguls and New York philanthropists - he wasn't picky about who he fleeced.
"The latest fashion among Jewish Supremacist 'geneticists' is to extol the discovery of uniquely special 'genes' predisposing Jews to experience the 'holocaust' and even inherit the experience of suffering from long dead ancestors. Such 'scientists' should be careful. As Jazz artist and essayist Gilad Atzmon wryly notes: 'They will put the anti-Semites out of business'.
"Ultimately, Jews, who have assimilated into the greater society or not, who intermarry and who do not, are all products of the social system in which they live and (like everyone else) they are the makers of the roles they decide to play within it.
"In the past, a uniquely disproportionate percentage of Jews chose to fight for universal humanist values - rejecting the notion of a chosen people.
"Today, a disproportionate percentage of educated Jews have chosen to embrace an 'ethno-religious' Supremacist dogma which binds them to an apartheid, militarist state and ideology ready to drag the world into a global war.
"Never forget! Racialist supremacist doctrines led Germany down the blind alley of totalitarianism and world war, in which scores of millions perished.
"Jews, especially young Jews, are increasingly repelled by Israel's crimes against humanity. The next step for them (and us) is to criticize, demystify and stand up to the toxic supremacist ideology linking the powerful domestic Zionist power configuration and its political clones with Israel.
"The root problem is not genetic, it is collective political dementia: a demented ideology that claims a chosen elite can forever dominate and exploit the majority of American people. The time will come when the accumulated disasters will force the American people to push back, unmasking the elite and rejecting its supremacist doctrines. Let us hope that they will act with passion guided by reason." (petras.lahaine.org, 4/9/15)
"The record provides no historical basis for the claims of Jewish Supremacists.
"What has been cited as the disproportionate 'Jewish genius' turns out to be a two-edged sword - demonstrating the best and the worst.
"Claiming a monopoly on high academic achievement must be expanded to owning up to the Jewish authors of the worst financial and foreign policy disasters - they too are 'high achievers'.
"Donations from financial billionaires, all 'geniuses', have financed the war crimes of the Israeli state and made possible the expansion of violent Jewish settlers throughout occupied Palestine - spreading misery and displacement for millions.
"In fairness, the most notorious Jewish swindler in contemporary America was even-handed: 'Bernie' Madoff swindled Jews and Goys. Hollywood moguls and New York philanthropists - he wasn't picky about who he fleeced.
"The latest fashion among Jewish Supremacist 'geneticists' is to extol the discovery of uniquely special 'genes' predisposing Jews to experience the 'holocaust' and even inherit the experience of suffering from long dead ancestors. Such 'scientists' should be careful. As Jazz artist and essayist Gilad Atzmon wryly notes: 'They will put the anti-Semites out of business'.
"Ultimately, Jews, who have assimilated into the greater society or not, who intermarry and who do not, are all products of the social system in which they live and (like everyone else) they are the makers of the roles they decide to play within it.
"In the past, a uniquely disproportionate percentage of Jews chose to fight for universal humanist values - rejecting the notion of a chosen people.
"Today, a disproportionate percentage of educated Jews have chosen to embrace an 'ethno-religious' Supremacist dogma which binds them to an apartheid, militarist state and ideology ready to drag the world into a global war.
"Never forget! Racialist supremacist doctrines led Germany down the blind alley of totalitarianism and world war, in which scores of millions perished.
"Jews, especially young Jews, are increasingly repelled by Israel's crimes against humanity. The next step for them (and us) is to criticize, demystify and stand up to the toxic supremacist ideology linking the powerful domestic Zionist power configuration and its political clones with Israel.
"The root problem is not genetic, it is collective political dementia: a demented ideology that claims a chosen elite can forever dominate and exploit the majority of American people. The time will come when the accumulated disasters will force the American people to push back, unmasking the elite and rejecting its supremacist doctrines. Let us hope that they will act with passion guided by reason." (petras.lahaine.org, 4/9/15)
Friday, October 2, 2015
James Petras on Jewish Supremacism 2
Challenging the Myths of Jewish Supremacists
"There are serious problems regarding the claims of the Jewish Supremacists.
"For centuries Jewish 'wisdom' was confined to textual exegesis of religious dogma - texts full of superstition and social control, as well as blind intolerance, and which produced neither reasoned arguments nor contributed to scientific and human advancement.
"Jewish scholarship of note occurred among thinkers like Spinoza who revolted against the Jewish ghetto gatekeepers and rejected Jewish dogma.
"Notable scientists emerged in the context of working and studying with non-Jews in non-Jewish institutions - the universities and centers of learning in the West. The majority of world-renowned Jewish scholars integrated and contributed to predominantly non-Jewish (Muslim and Christian) and secular institutions of higher learning.
"Historically, highly talented individuals of Jewish origin succeeded by renouncing the constraints of everyday Jewish life, rabbinical overseers and Jewish institutions. Most contemporary prestigious scientists, including the frequently cited Nobel Prize winners, have little or nothing to do with Judaism and their contributions have everything to do with the highly secular, integrated culture in which they prospered intellectually - despite expressions of crude anti-Semitism in the larger society.
"Secondly, Jewish Supremacists persist in claiming 'racial credit' for the achievements of individuals who have publicly renounced, denounced and distanced themselves from Judaism and have dismissed any notion of Israel as their spiritual homeland. Their universal prestige has prevented them from being labeled apostate or 'self-hating'. Albert Einstein, often cited by the Supremacists as the supreme example of 'Jewish genius', denounced Israel's war crimes and showed disdain for any tribal identity. In their era, Marx and Trotsky, like the vast majority of emancipated European Jews, given the chance, became engaged in universalistic organizations, attacking the entire notion that Jews were a 'special people' chosen by divine authority (or by the latter-day Zionists).
"Thirdly, Supremacists compile a very selective list of virtuous Jews, while omitting areas of life and activity where Jews have disproportionately played a negative and destructive role.
"After all, is it Jewish 'genius' that makes Israel a leading exporter of arms, intrusive, high-tech spy systems and sends military and paramilitary advisers and torturers to work with death-squad regimes in Africa and Latin America?
"Among the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize are three Israeli Prime Ministers who waged wars of ethnic cleansing against millions of Palestinians and expanded racist 'Jews only' settlements throughout the occupied Palestinian territories. These include Menachem Begin (notorious career bomber and terrorist), Yitzhak Rabin (a militarist who was assassinated by an even more racist, Jewish terrorist), and Shimon Peres. Among Jewish-American Nobel 'peaceniks' is Henry Kissinger who oversaw the brutal and illegal US war in Indo-China, causing 4 million Vietnamese deaths; who wrote the 'template for regime change' by overthrowing the democratically elected government of Chilean President Allende and condemned Chile to decades of police state terror; and who supported Indonesia's destruction of East Timor.
"In other words, these Nobel recipients, who Supremacists cite as 'examples of Jewish Supremacy', have sown terror and injustice on countless captive peoples and nations - giving the Nobel Peace Prize a dubious distinction.
"Among the greatest billion dollar swindlers in recent US history we'd find a disproportionate percentage of American Jews - curiously not mentioned by the Supremacists in their usual litany: Bernard Madoff pillaged over $50 billion from his clients, Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken and Marc Rich are well-known names, adding the distinction of 'Jewish genius' to a list of financial mega-felons.
"Among the less respectable notables whose material successes have been tarnished by personal weaknesses, we have the billionaire and pedophile pimp, Jeffry Epstein; IMF President, rapist and debaucher, Dominic Strauss Kahn; entrepreneur and 'nudist' Dov Charney; New York Governor and 'repeat customer, Elliot Spitzer; Congressman and exhibitionist Anthony Weiner; and the fun-loving sports impresario who brought down FIFA, the piratical Chuck Blazer. Curiously, none of these extraordinarily successful notables have been cited as examples of Jewish Supremacy.
"As we contemplate the millions of war refugees driven from the Near East and North Africa, we should credit the role of US neo-liberal and neo-conservative ideologues and policymakers - a disproportionate percentage of whom are Jews. Millions of Chilean workers suffered as Milton Friedman and his Chicago Boys 'advised' Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet on dismantling the welfare state (even if it required the murder of trade unionists!). Ayn Rand (Alyssa Rosenbaum) and her fanatical free market epigones have savaged all progressive social legislation and turned the most retrograde forms of selfishness into a religion of 'superiority'!
"The disastrous US war against Iraq was largely organized, promoted and justified by a disproportionate percentage of US Jews (Zionists), including leading policymakers in the Bush and Obama administrations - Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Elliott Abrams, Dennis Ross, Martyn Indyk, David Frum, Shulsky, Levey, Cohen, Rahm Emanuel etc. They continue to push for war against Iran and should be seen as the 'godfathers' of the tragedies of Iraq, Syria and Libya from which millions have fled.
"The biggest financial crisis since the great depression was largely due to the financial policies of Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan. The trillion dollar bailout of Wall Street by Ben Shalom Bernacke and Stanley Fischer, while Janet Yellen ignored the plight of millions of Americans who lost their homes because of mortgage foreclosures.
"In sum, Jewish Supremacists should proudly take credit for the American Jews who have been disproportionately responsible for the largest economic and foreign policy failures of the contemporary period - including the horrific suffering these have entailed!
"Back in the more normal world of crime, Russian-Jewish mobsters dominate or share supremacy with the Italian Mafia in New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Miami and scores of cities in between. They display their unique genius at extortion and murder - knowing they can always find safe haven in the 'Promised Land'!
"On the cultural front, the finest Jewish writers, artists, musicians and scientists have emerged outside of Israel. A few may have immigrated to the Jewish state, but many other intellectuals and artists of note have chosen to leave Israel, repelled by the racist, intolerant and repressive apartheid state and society promoted by Jewish Supremacists."
To be continued...
"There are serious problems regarding the claims of the Jewish Supremacists.
"For centuries Jewish 'wisdom' was confined to textual exegesis of religious dogma - texts full of superstition and social control, as well as blind intolerance, and which produced neither reasoned arguments nor contributed to scientific and human advancement.
"Jewish scholarship of note occurred among thinkers like Spinoza who revolted against the Jewish ghetto gatekeepers and rejected Jewish dogma.
"Notable scientists emerged in the context of working and studying with non-Jews in non-Jewish institutions - the universities and centers of learning in the West. The majority of world-renowned Jewish scholars integrated and contributed to predominantly non-Jewish (Muslim and Christian) and secular institutions of higher learning.
"Historically, highly talented individuals of Jewish origin succeeded by renouncing the constraints of everyday Jewish life, rabbinical overseers and Jewish institutions. Most contemporary prestigious scientists, including the frequently cited Nobel Prize winners, have little or nothing to do with Judaism and their contributions have everything to do with the highly secular, integrated culture in which they prospered intellectually - despite expressions of crude anti-Semitism in the larger society.
"Secondly, Jewish Supremacists persist in claiming 'racial credit' for the achievements of individuals who have publicly renounced, denounced and distanced themselves from Judaism and have dismissed any notion of Israel as their spiritual homeland. Their universal prestige has prevented them from being labeled apostate or 'self-hating'. Albert Einstein, often cited by the Supremacists as the supreme example of 'Jewish genius', denounced Israel's war crimes and showed disdain for any tribal identity. In their era, Marx and Trotsky, like the vast majority of emancipated European Jews, given the chance, became engaged in universalistic organizations, attacking the entire notion that Jews were a 'special people' chosen by divine authority (or by the latter-day Zionists).
"Thirdly, Supremacists compile a very selective list of virtuous Jews, while omitting areas of life and activity where Jews have disproportionately played a negative and destructive role.
"After all, is it Jewish 'genius' that makes Israel a leading exporter of arms, intrusive, high-tech spy systems and sends military and paramilitary advisers and torturers to work with death-squad regimes in Africa and Latin America?
"Among the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize are three Israeli Prime Ministers who waged wars of ethnic cleansing against millions of Palestinians and expanded racist 'Jews only' settlements throughout the occupied Palestinian territories. These include Menachem Begin (notorious career bomber and terrorist), Yitzhak Rabin (a militarist who was assassinated by an even more racist, Jewish terrorist), and Shimon Peres. Among Jewish-American Nobel 'peaceniks' is Henry Kissinger who oversaw the brutal and illegal US war in Indo-China, causing 4 million Vietnamese deaths; who wrote the 'template for regime change' by overthrowing the democratically elected government of Chilean President Allende and condemned Chile to decades of police state terror; and who supported Indonesia's destruction of East Timor.
"In other words, these Nobel recipients, who Supremacists cite as 'examples of Jewish Supremacy', have sown terror and injustice on countless captive peoples and nations - giving the Nobel Peace Prize a dubious distinction.
"Among the greatest billion dollar swindlers in recent US history we'd find a disproportionate percentage of American Jews - curiously not mentioned by the Supremacists in their usual litany: Bernard Madoff pillaged over $50 billion from his clients, Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken and Marc Rich are well-known names, adding the distinction of 'Jewish genius' to a list of financial mega-felons.
"Among the less respectable notables whose material successes have been tarnished by personal weaknesses, we have the billionaire and pedophile pimp, Jeffry Epstein; IMF President, rapist and debaucher, Dominic Strauss Kahn; entrepreneur and 'nudist' Dov Charney; New York Governor and 'repeat customer, Elliot Spitzer; Congressman and exhibitionist Anthony Weiner; and the fun-loving sports impresario who brought down FIFA, the piratical Chuck Blazer. Curiously, none of these extraordinarily successful notables have been cited as examples of Jewish Supremacy.
"As we contemplate the millions of war refugees driven from the Near East and North Africa, we should credit the role of US neo-liberal and neo-conservative ideologues and policymakers - a disproportionate percentage of whom are Jews. Millions of Chilean workers suffered as Milton Friedman and his Chicago Boys 'advised' Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet on dismantling the welfare state (even if it required the murder of trade unionists!). Ayn Rand (Alyssa Rosenbaum) and her fanatical free market epigones have savaged all progressive social legislation and turned the most retrograde forms of selfishness into a religion of 'superiority'!
"The disastrous US war against Iraq was largely organized, promoted and justified by a disproportionate percentage of US Jews (Zionists), including leading policymakers in the Bush and Obama administrations - Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Elliott Abrams, Dennis Ross, Martyn Indyk, David Frum, Shulsky, Levey, Cohen, Rahm Emanuel etc. They continue to push for war against Iran and should be seen as the 'godfathers' of the tragedies of Iraq, Syria and Libya from which millions have fled.
"The biggest financial crisis since the great depression was largely due to the financial policies of Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan. The trillion dollar bailout of Wall Street by Ben Shalom Bernacke and Stanley Fischer, while Janet Yellen ignored the plight of millions of Americans who lost their homes because of mortgage foreclosures.
"In sum, Jewish Supremacists should proudly take credit for the American Jews who have been disproportionately responsible for the largest economic and foreign policy failures of the contemporary period - including the horrific suffering these have entailed!
"Back in the more normal world of crime, Russian-Jewish mobsters dominate or share supremacy with the Italian Mafia in New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Miami and scores of cities in between. They display their unique genius at extortion and murder - knowing they can always find safe haven in the 'Promised Land'!
"On the cultural front, the finest Jewish writers, artists, musicians and scientists have emerged outside of Israel. A few may have immigrated to the Jewish state, but many other intellectuals and artists of note have chosen to leave Israel, repelled by the racist, intolerant and repressive apartheid state and society promoted by Jewish Supremacists."
To be continued...
Thursday, October 1, 2015
James Petras on Jewish Supremacism 1
Is there anyone so wise to the ways of the world as James Petras? Rhetorical question.
Here's Part 1 of my 3-part serialisation of one of his most recent essays, The Doctrine of 'Superior People': The Bond Between Israel & World Zionism. Forget the claret, it's the clarity you need:
Introduction
"The single greatest feat of Israel and its overseas missions has not been material success, or the military conquest of millions of unarmed Palestinians, it has been ideological - the widespread acceptance in the US of a doctrine that claims 'Jews are a superior people'.
"Apart from small, extremist rightwing sects who exhibit visceral anti-Semitism and denigrate everything Jewish, there are very few academics and politicians willing to question this supremacist doctrine. On the contrary, there is an incurable tendency to advance oneself by accepting and embellishing on it.
"For example, in August 2015, US Vice-president Joe Biden attributed 'special genius' to Jews, slavish flattery that embarrassed even New York's liberal Jewish intellectuals.
"Israel's dominant role in formulating US Middle East policy is largely a product of its success at recruiting, socializing and motivating overseas Jews to act as an organized force to intervene in US politics and push Israel's agenda.
"What motivates American Jews, who have been raised and educated in the US, to serve Israel? After all, these are individuals who prospered, achieved high status and occupy the highest positions of prestige and responsibility. Why should they parrot the policies of Israel and follow the dictates of Israeli leaders (a foreign regime), serving its violent colonial, racist agenda?
"What binds a minority of highly educated and privileged Jews to the most rabidly rightwing Israeli regime in history - a relationship they actually celebrate?
"What turns comfortable, prosperous American Jews into vindictive bullies, willing and able to blackmail, threaten and punish any dissident voices among their Gentile and Jewish compatriots who have dared to criticize Israel?
"What prevents many intelligent, liberal and progressive Jews from openly questioning Israel's agenda, and especially confronting the role of Zionist zealots who serve as tel Aviv's fifth column against the interest of the United states?
"There are numerous historical and personal factors that can and should be taken into account to understand this phenomenon. In this essay, I am going to focus on one - the ideology that 'Jews are a superior people'. The notion that Jews, either through some genetic, biologic, cultural, historical, familial and/or upbringing, have special qualities allowing them to achieve at a uniquely higher level than the 'inferior' non-Jews. We will proceed by sketching the main outline of the Jewish supremacist ideology and then advance our critique.
"We will conclude by evaluating the negative consequences of this ideology and propose a democratic alternative.
Jewish Supremacism
"Exponents of Jewish Supremacism (JS) frequently cite the prestigious awards, worldly successes and high honors, which, they emphasize, have been disproportionately achieved by Jews.
"The argument goes: While Jews represent less than 0.2% of the world population, they have produced 24% of the US Nobel Prize winners; over 30% of the Ivy League professors and students; and the majority of major US film, stage and TV producers.
"They cite the 'disproportionate number' of scientists, leading doctors, lawyers and billionaires.
"They cite past geniuses like Einstein, Freud and Marx.
"They point to the founders of the world's great monotheistic religions - Moses and Abraham.
"They lay claim to a unique learning tradition embedded in centuries of Talmudic scholarship.
"Jewish supremacists never miss a chance to cite the 'Jewish background' of any highly accomplished contemporary public figure in the entertainment, publishing, financial fields, or any other sectors of life in the US.
"Disproportionately great accomplishments by a disproportionate minority has become the mantra for heralding a self-styled 'meritocratic elite'... and for justifying its disproportionate wealth, power and privilege - and influence.
To be continued...
Here's Part 1 of my 3-part serialisation of one of his most recent essays, The Doctrine of 'Superior People': The Bond Between Israel & World Zionism. Forget the claret, it's the clarity you need:
Introduction
"The single greatest feat of Israel and its overseas missions has not been material success, or the military conquest of millions of unarmed Palestinians, it has been ideological - the widespread acceptance in the US of a doctrine that claims 'Jews are a superior people'.
"Apart from small, extremist rightwing sects who exhibit visceral anti-Semitism and denigrate everything Jewish, there are very few academics and politicians willing to question this supremacist doctrine. On the contrary, there is an incurable tendency to advance oneself by accepting and embellishing on it.
"For example, in August 2015, US Vice-president Joe Biden attributed 'special genius' to Jews, slavish flattery that embarrassed even New York's liberal Jewish intellectuals.
"Israel's dominant role in formulating US Middle East policy is largely a product of its success at recruiting, socializing and motivating overseas Jews to act as an organized force to intervene in US politics and push Israel's agenda.
"What motivates American Jews, who have been raised and educated in the US, to serve Israel? After all, these are individuals who prospered, achieved high status and occupy the highest positions of prestige and responsibility. Why should they parrot the policies of Israel and follow the dictates of Israeli leaders (a foreign regime), serving its violent colonial, racist agenda?
"What binds a minority of highly educated and privileged Jews to the most rabidly rightwing Israeli regime in history - a relationship they actually celebrate?
"What turns comfortable, prosperous American Jews into vindictive bullies, willing and able to blackmail, threaten and punish any dissident voices among their Gentile and Jewish compatriots who have dared to criticize Israel?
"What prevents many intelligent, liberal and progressive Jews from openly questioning Israel's agenda, and especially confronting the role of Zionist zealots who serve as tel Aviv's fifth column against the interest of the United states?
"There are numerous historical and personal factors that can and should be taken into account to understand this phenomenon. In this essay, I am going to focus on one - the ideology that 'Jews are a superior people'. The notion that Jews, either through some genetic, biologic, cultural, historical, familial and/or upbringing, have special qualities allowing them to achieve at a uniquely higher level than the 'inferior' non-Jews. We will proceed by sketching the main outline of the Jewish supremacist ideology and then advance our critique.
"We will conclude by evaluating the negative consequences of this ideology and propose a democratic alternative.
Jewish Supremacism
"Exponents of Jewish Supremacism (JS) frequently cite the prestigious awards, worldly successes and high honors, which, they emphasize, have been disproportionately achieved by Jews.
"The argument goes: While Jews represent less than 0.2% of the world population, they have produced 24% of the US Nobel Prize winners; over 30% of the Ivy League professors and students; and the majority of major US film, stage and TV producers.
"They cite the 'disproportionate number' of scientists, leading doctors, lawyers and billionaires.
"They cite past geniuses like Einstein, Freud and Marx.
"They point to the founders of the world's great monotheistic religions - Moses and Abraham.
"They lay claim to a unique learning tradition embedded in centuries of Talmudic scholarship.
"Jewish supremacists never miss a chance to cite the 'Jewish background' of any highly accomplished contemporary public figure in the entertainment, publishing, financial fields, or any other sectors of life in the US.
"Disproportionately great accomplishments by a disproportionate minority has become the mantra for heralding a self-styled 'meritocratic elite'... and for justifying its disproportionate wealth, power and privilege - and influence.
To be continued...
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Made in Israel: America's Next War - Part 2
Continued from the previous post...
Israel's Proxies and the Obama-Iran Nuclear Accord
"All the major US spy agencies, including the CIA, long ago concluded that Iran did not have a nuclear weapons program. Its nuclear program has been proven to be limited to legal, internationally-sanctioned, peaceful civilian use. When the US intelligence establishment went 'off-script' and cleared Iran of a nuclear weapons program, Israel responded by brazenly assassinating five Iranian scientists and engineers, leaking faked evidence of a nuclear weapons program, and directing its US proxies to push the US toward greater economic sanctions. They escalated their media campaign, demonizing Iran, pushing for an economic and military blockade of Iran using the US naval forces in the Persian Gulf and its military bases in adjoining countries. Israeli officials want yet another US war for Israel along the lines of the Iraq invasion.
"With the recent change in the Iranian government leadership via democratic elections there have been serious serious expressions of greater flexibility with regard to inspections of its nuclear programs and facilities. At the same time, Washington has been confronted with multiple, escalating insurgent wars in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan. This provides the context for President Obama's 'pivot' toward negotiations and diplomacy to secure an agreement with Iran and away from military confrontation.
"This has infuriated the Netanyahu regime. Its government leaders and agents met with the Presidents of the 52 Major American Jewish Organizations, leading Zionist Washington insiders like Dennis Ross, super-rich Zionist billionaires, and multiple delegations of notables, and told them to launch an all-out campaign to sabotage the Iran-US-England-France-Russia-China and Germany ('P5+1') nuclear agreement.
"The entire Zionist political apparatus immediately organized a multi-pronged, multi-million dollar campaign blitz to undermine the US President. The American (sic) Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC) mobilized hundreds of its full-time functionaries, invading the US Congress with offers of all- expenses-paid junkets to Israel, political threats, campaign 'donation' enticements, and outright blackmail.
"Influential US Zionist Congress people joined the onslaught with their 'leader', the senator from Tel Aviv, Charles Schumer, accompanied by his fellow Zionist one-hundred percenters. Congress people like Steve Israel, Ted Deutsch, Eliot Engel and Nita Lowery. They have openly chosen to follow the dictates of the Israeli prime minister against their fellow Democrat, US President Obama. Schumer, who frequently boasts that his name derives from 'shomer Yisrael' (Israel's Guardian), flaunts his 'role in Washington' to serve Israel's interest. The unannounced (or undenounced) 'elephant in the room' is their primary loyalty to Israel over the US. The Democratic Congressional Zionists have joined hands with the Republican war-mongers - both in tow to militarists, Zionist billionaires and media moguls. The 52 Organizations brazenly announced a $40 million budget to fund an Israeli front group, 'Citizens for a Nuclear-Free Iran', to undermine President Obama's (and other members of the P5+1) push for diplomacy.
"Netanyahu's 'megaphones' in the US mass media spread his message in their daily reports and editorial pages. The Zionist power configuration ran roughshod over dissident Jewish voters and Congress people who dared to support Obama's Iran agreement - an agreement which has majority support of the war-weary US public and support from US scientists and Nobel Prize recipients.
"President Obama has finally counterattacked this campaign to undermine the agreement, calling attention to the fact that 'the same people who led us into the Iraq war are pushing us into war with Iran'. The President discreetly omitted identifying the Israeli links of 'the same people'.
"Obama understands that the alternative to the peace accord opposed by Israel and the Zionist-led US Congress members will be a devastating regional war, costing trillions of dollars in losses to the US economy, thousands of US lives and hundreds of thousands of wounded soldiers - not to speak of millions of Iranian casualties - and an environmental holocaust! While the Zionist power configuration saturates the airwaves with its unending lies and fear-mongering, each and every major city and community Jewish Confederation have sent their activists to plant stories and twist arms to sabotage the agreement.
"While many US intellectuals, liberals, progressives, and leftists support the US-Iran agreement (see the Scientists' Letter to Obama on Iran Nuclear Deal, 8/8/15, with 29 top scholars and Nobel laureates supporting diplomacy), few would dare to identify and attack Israel's US proxies as they promote Tel Aviv's agenda pushing the US to war with Iran. A brief glance through the sectarian left press, for example, The Socialist Register, New Politics, New Left Review, finds no discussion of the powerful, well-financed, highly organized, elite-driven Israeli proxies and their role in determining US wars in the Middle East, and more specifically the war agenda toward Iran.
Conclusion
"The success or failure of the US-Iran nuclear agreement will have momentous, world-historic consequences that go far beyond the middle East. Obama is absolutely right to pose the question as one between a diplomatic accord or a large-scale, long-term devastating war. But war is what Israel, its leaders, its majority and its opposition parties are demanding and what its US proxies are pursuing.
"The basic question for all Americans is whether we will act as an independent, sovereign country pursuing peace through diplomacy, as we currently see unfolding with Iran and Cuba, or a submissive military instrument, directed by Israel's proxies, hell-bent on destroying America for Israel." (petras.lahaine.org)
Israel's Proxies and the Obama-Iran Nuclear Accord
"All the major US spy agencies, including the CIA, long ago concluded that Iran did not have a nuclear weapons program. Its nuclear program has been proven to be limited to legal, internationally-sanctioned, peaceful civilian use. When the US intelligence establishment went 'off-script' and cleared Iran of a nuclear weapons program, Israel responded by brazenly assassinating five Iranian scientists and engineers, leaking faked evidence of a nuclear weapons program, and directing its US proxies to push the US toward greater economic sanctions. They escalated their media campaign, demonizing Iran, pushing for an economic and military blockade of Iran using the US naval forces in the Persian Gulf and its military bases in adjoining countries. Israeli officials want yet another US war for Israel along the lines of the Iraq invasion.
"With the recent change in the Iranian government leadership via democratic elections there have been serious serious expressions of greater flexibility with regard to inspections of its nuclear programs and facilities. At the same time, Washington has been confronted with multiple, escalating insurgent wars in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan. This provides the context for President Obama's 'pivot' toward negotiations and diplomacy to secure an agreement with Iran and away from military confrontation.
"This has infuriated the Netanyahu regime. Its government leaders and agents met with the Presidents of the 52 Major American Jewish Organizations, leading Zionist Washington insiders like Dennis Ross, super-rich Zionist billionaires, and multiple delegations of notables, and told them to launch an all-out campaign to sabotage the Iran-US-England-France-Russia-China and Germany ('P5+1') nuclear agreement.
"The entire Zionist political apparatus immediately organized a multi-pronged, multi-million dollar campaign blitz to undermine the US President. The American (sic) Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC) mobilized hundreds of its full-time functionaries, invading the US Congress with offers of all- expenses-paid junkets to Israel, political threats, campaign 'donation' enticements, and outright blackmail.
"Influential US Zionist Congress people joined the onslaught with their 'leader', the senator from Tel Aviv, Charles Schumer, accompanied by his fellow Zionist one-hundred percenters. Congress people like Steve Israel, Ted Deutsch, Eliot Engel and Nita Lowery. They have openly chosen to follow the dictates of the Israeli prime minister against their fellow Democrat, US President Obama. Schumer, who frequently boasts that his name derives from 'shomer Yisrael' (Israel's Guardian), flaunts his 'role in Washington' to serve Israel's interest. The unannounced (or undenounced) 'elephant in the room' is their primary loyalty to Israel over the US. The Democratic Congressional Zionists have joined hands with the Republican war-mongers - both in tow to militarists, Zionist billionaires and media moguls. The 52 Organizations brazenly announced a $40 million budget to fund an Israeli front group, 'Citizens for a Nuclear-Free Iran', to undermine President Obama's (and other members of the P5+1) push for diplomacy.
"Netanyahu's 'megaphones' in the US mass media spread his message in their daily reports and editorial pages. The Zionist power configuration ran roughshod over dissident Jewish voters and Congress people who dared to support Obama's Iran agreement - an agreement which has majority support of the war-weary US public and support from US scientists and Nobel Prize recipients.
"President Obama has finally counterattacked this campaign to undermine the agreement, calling attention to the fact that 'the same people who led us into the Iraq war are pushing us into war with Iran'. The President discreetly omitted identifying the Israeli links of 'the same people'.
"Obama understands that the alternative to the peace accord opposed by Israel and the Zionist-led US Congress members will be a devastating regional war, costing trillions of dollars in losses to the US economy, thousands of US lives and hundreds of thousands of wounded soldiers - not to speak of millions of Iranian casualties - and an environmental holocaust! While the Zionist power configuration saturates the airwaves with its unending lies and fear-mongering, each and every major city and community Jewish Confederation have sent their activists to plant stories and twist arms to sabotage the agreement.
"While many US intellectuals, liberals, progressives, and leftists support the US-Iran agreement (see the Scientists' Letter to Obama on Iran Nuclear Deal, 8/8/15, with 29 top scholars and Nobel laureates supporting diplomacy), few would dare to identify and attack Israel's US proxies as they promote Tel Aviv's agenda pushing the US to war with Iran. A brief glance through the sectarian left press, for example, The Socialist Register, New Politics, New Left Review, finds no discussion of the powerful, well-financed, highly organized, elite-driven Israeli proxies and their role in determining US wars in the Middle East, and more specifically the war agenda toward Iran.
Conclusion
"The success or failure of the US-Iran nuclear agreement will have momentous, world-historic consequences that go far beyond the middle East. Obama is absolutely right to pose the question as one between a diplomatic accord or a large-scale, long-term devastating war. But war is what Israel, its leaders, its majority and its opposition parties are demanding and what its US proxies are pursuing.
"The basic question for all Americans is whether we will act as an independent, sovereign country pursuing peace through diplomacy, as we currently see unfolding with Iran and Cuba, or a submissive military instrument, directed by Israel's proxies, hell-bent on destroying America for Israel." (petras.lahaine.org)
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Made in Israel: America's Next War - Part 1
There's far more to US politics at the moment than the circus antics of presidential wannabes such as Trump or Clinton.
Although you won't read about it in the Australian msm, there's actually a make-or-break struggle going on between Israel (and its US fifth column) and the US president as to whether more American blood and treasure should be spilled/squandered (this time in a war against Iran) to keep Israel in the manner to which it has become accustomed, namely, top dog in the Middle East.
For the big picture, beginning with the background, and concluding tomorrow with the current state of play, here's the latest must-read James Petras essay:
The Conference of 52 Presidents of the Major American (sic) Jewish Organizations & the US-Iran Nuclear Agreement: The Centrepiece of US Foreign Policy Struggle
Prologue
In the village of Duma, an 18-month-old baby died following the fire-bombing of his family's home by Israeli settlers. The father of the child died of burns a week later and the surviving mother and young sibling are barely alive - covered with burns from racist Jewish arson.
"The United Nations Special Committee to investigate Israel's practices toward Palestinians in Israeli-occupied territory has revealed that the 'root cause' of the escalating violence is the 'continuous policy of Jewish settlement expansion (financed and defended by the Netanyahu regime) and the climate of impunity relating to the activities of the settlers (financed and defended by the Presidents of the 52 Major American Jewish Organizations). (UN News Centre, 10/8/15)
Introduction
The recent US-Iran nuclear agreement, titled the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), has implications far beyond the ending of nearly 40 years of regional confrontation.
"Several fundamental issues concerning the nature of US policymaking, the power of a foreign regime (Israel) in deciding questions of war and peace, and the role organized power configurations with overseas loyalties play in making and breaking executive and legislative authorities.
"To investigate these fundamental issues it is important to discuss the historical context leading up to the rise of this paradoxical situation: Where a 'global power' is subjected to the dictates of a second-rate state through the strategic penetration and influence of domestic organizations composed of 'nominal citizens' of the subject state with 'divided (to put it politely) loyalties'.
The Centrality of Israel's Unchallenged Regional Supremacy
"The motor force of Israeli foreign and domestic policy is their drive for unchallenged regional supremacy: Military dominance through wars, territorial occupation, brutal armed interventions, extra-territorial political assassinations of opponents and favorable one-sided treaties. To ensure its unquestioned dominance Israel has developed the only nuclear weapons arsenal and largest missile launch capacity in the region, and has openly declared its willingness to use nuclear weapons against regional rivals.
"Israel's repeated mantra that it faces an 'existential threat' from its Arab neighbors and subjugated Palestinians has no factual basis. On the contrary, history has taught the world that Israel, directly and indirectly, has engaged in a series of aggressive wars devastating its Arab and Muslim neighbors. Israel has bombed and/or invaded Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Palestine and Sudan. Israel has assassinated scientists in Iran and Palestinian political leasers, as well as intellectuals, writers and poets in the Gulf, Jordan and Europe. [And Lebanon: MERC] Even family members have not been spared Israeli terror.
"Israel can brutalize its neighbors with total impunity because of its vast military superiority, but its real power is found in its overseas proxies, the Tel Aviv-dominated Zionist power configurations [ZPCs], especially in North America and Europe. The most important proxy organizations and individuals operate in the United States. Thanks to them Israel has received over $150 billion dollars in economic and military grants and loans from US taxpayers in the past half-century. Each year Israel rakes in billions in tribute, billions in tax-free donations from billionaire Israel loyalists with dual US citizenship, who extract their wealth from American workers, investors and gamblers, and hundreds of billions via unrestricted investments, privileged market access and technology transfers.
"The economic and military transfers to Israel result from the cumulative build-up of political power among powerful US Zionists. No one today disputes that what is dubbed the 'pro-Israel lobby' is the most powerful configuration inside Washington DC today. Focusing primarily on the 'Israel lobby' overlooks the powerful role that influential, Zionist political officials have played in deciding issues prioritized by the Israeli leadership.
"Israeli power over the making and implementing of US Middle East policy has led to the US invasions of Iraq, Syria and Libya; the current economic boycott and blockade of Iran; the breakup of Sudan; and the bombing of Somalia.
"Israeli power in the US operates through various political instruments in different institutional settings. The pro-Israel mass media moguls at the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and all the TV networks unconditionally defend Israel's bombing, dispossession and repression of Palestinians while demonizing any Arab or Muslim states which have opposed its brutality - frequently calling for the US to impose sanctions and/or to launch armed attacks against Israel's critics.
"The US military campaign known as the 'Global War on Terror', a series of brutal invasions and 'regime changes' launched after the attacks of September 11, 2001, was formulated and promoted by fanatical Israeli proxies in strategic positions within the Bush government, especially Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, 'Scooter' Libby, Elliott Abrams and Richard Perle. The boycott of Iran was designed and implemented by US Treasury officials Levey and Cohen. The drumbeat for war in Iraq and the phony 'intelligence' about 'weapons of mass destruction' was propagated by New York Times scribe, Judith Miller, designed by Wolfowitz and Feith, backed by the 52 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations, and ultimately paid for with the lives of over 5,000 Americans and well over a million Iraqi civilians. The destruction and breakup of Iraq, a long-time supporter of Palestinian national rights, was accomplished without the loss of a single Israeli life - despite the enormous benefit the Jewish state has enjoyed from the war! The extraordinary success of this highest Israeli military priority was due entirely to the machinations of Israel's highly placed US proxies.
"Yet the cost of the war has been very high for the American people (and unimaginably high for Iraqis): Over a quarter million physical and mental casualties among US troops; two trillion dollars and counting in military expenditures crippling the US economy and a vast and growing army of Islamist and nationalist rebels opposing US interests throughout the region.
"The Israeli power configuration within the US led the US into a war which enhanced Israel's dominance of the Middle East and accelerated its annexation of Palestinian land. But Israeli ambition for total regional power is not complete. It still faces a formidable opponent to its conquest of the Middle East: Iran remains a staunch supporter of the people and national sovereignty of Palestine, Syria and Lebanon.
"The regime of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, backed by the entire Israeli political opposition and the majority of the Jewish electorate, has been aggressively pushing for a US confrontation with Iran - through economic and eventually military warfare.
"There have been scores of public and private meetings in the US and elsewhere where Netanyahu's regime 'informed' (or rather dictated to) the entire Zionist power configuration to launch an economic and military attack against Iran with the open aim of 'regime change' and the ultimate aim of breaking up and destroying the Islamic Republic - similar to the destruction of Iraq, Libya, and now Syria."
Part 2 to follow...
Although you won't read about it in the Australian msm, there's actually a make-or-break struggle going on between Israel (and its US fifth column) and the US president as to whether more American blood and treasure should be spilled/squandered (this time in a war against Iran) to keep Israel in the manner to which it has become accustomed, namely, top dog in the Middle East.
For the big picture, beginning with the background, and concluding tomorrow with the current state of play, here's the latest must-read James Petras essay:
The Conference of 52 Presidents of the Major American (sic) Jewish Organizations & the US-Iran Nuclear Agreement: The Centrepiece of US Foreign Policy Struggle
Prologue
In the village of Duma, an 18-month-old baby died following the fire-bombing of his family's home by Israeli settlers. The father of the child died of burns a week later and the surviving mother and young sibling are barely alive - covered with burns from racist Jewish arson.
"The United Nations Special Committee to investigate Israel's practices toward Palestinians in Israeli-occupied territory has revealed that the 'root cause' of the escalating violence is the 'continuous policy of Jewish settlement expansion (financed and defended by the Netanyahu regime) and the climate of impunity relating to the activities of the settlers (financed and defended by the Presidents of the 52 Major American Jewish Organizations). (UN News Centre, 10/8/15)
Introduction
The recent US-Iran nuclear agreement, titled the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), has implications far beyond the ending of nearly 40 years of regional confrontation.
"Several fundamental issues concerning the nature of US policymaking, the power of a foreign regime (Israel) in deciding questions of war and peace, and the role organized power configurations with overseas loyalties play in making and breaking executive and legislative authorities.
"To investigate these fundamental issues it is important to discuss the historical context leading up to the rise of this paradoxical situation: Where a 'global power' is subjected to the dictates of a second-rate state through the strategic penetration and influence of domestic organizations composed of 'nominal citizens' of the subject state with 'divided (to put it politely) loyalties'.
The Centrality of Israel's Unchallenged Regional Supremacy
"The motor force of Israeli foreign and domestic policy is their drive for unchallenged regional supremacy: Military dominance through wars, territorial occupation, brutal armed interventions, extra-territorial political assassinations of opponents and favorable one-sided treaties. To ensure its unquestioned dominance Israel has developed the only nuclear weapons arsenal and largest missile launch capacity in the region, and has openly declared its willingness to use nuclear weapons against regional rivals.
"Israel's repeated mantra that it faces an 'existential threat' from its Arab neighbors and subjugated Palestinians has no factual basis. On the contrary, history has taught the world that Israel, directly and indirectly, has engaged in a series of aggressive wars devastating its Arab and Muslim neighbors. Israel has bombed and/or invaded Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Palestine and Sudan. Israel has assassinated scientists in Iran and Palestinian political leasers, as well as intellectuals, writers and poets in the Gulf, Jordan and Europe. [And Lebanon: MERC] Even family members have not been spared Israeli terror.
"Israel can brutalize its neighbors with total impunity because of its vast military superiority, but its real power is found in its overseas proxies, the Tel Aviv-dominated Zionist power configurations [ZPCs], especially in North America and Europe. The most important proxy organizations and individuals operate in the United States. Thanks to them Israel has received over $150 billion dollars in economic and military grants and loans from US taxpayers in the past half-century. Each year Israel rakes in billions in tribute, billions in tax-free donations from billionaire Israel loyalists with dual US citizenship, who extract their wealth from American workers, investors and gamblers, and hundreds of billions via unrestricted investments, privileged market access and technology transfers.
"The economic and military transfers to Israel result from the cumulative build-up of political power among powerful US Zionists. No one today disputes that what is dubbed the 'pro-Israel lobby' is the most powerful configuration inside Washington DC today. Focusing primarily on the 'Israel lobby' overlooks the powerful role that influential, Zionist political officials have played in deciding issues prioritized by the Israeli leadership.
"Israeli power over the making and implementing of US Middle East policy has led to the US invasions of Iraq, Syria and Libya; the current economic boycott and blockade of Iran; the breakup of Sudan; and the bombing of Somalia.
"Israeli power in the US operates through various political instruments in different institutional settings. The pro-Israel mass media moguls at the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and all the TV networks unconditionally defend Israel's bombing, dispossession and repression of Palestinians while demonizing any Arab or Muslim states which have opposed its brutality - frequently calling for the US to impose sanctions and/or to launch armed attacks against Israel's critics.
"The US military campaign known as the 'Global War on Terror', a series of brutal invasions and 'regime changes' launched after the attacks of September 11, 2001, was formulated and promoted by fanatical Israeli proxies in strategic positions within the Bush government, especially Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, 'Scooter' Libby, Elliott Abrams and Richard Perle. The boycott of Iran was designed and implemented by US Treasury officials Levey and Cohen. The drumbeat for war in Iraq and the phony 'intelligence' about 'weapons of mass destruction' was propagated by New York Times scribe, Judith Miller, designed by Wolfowitz and Feith, backed by the 52 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations, and ultimately paid for with the lives of over 5,000 Americans and well over a million Iraqi civilians. The destruction and breakup of Iraq, a long-time supporter of Palestinian national rights, was accomplished without the loss of a single Israeli life - despite the enormous benefit the Jewish state has enjoyed from the war! The extraordinary success of this highest Israeli military priority was due entirely to the machinations of Israel's highly placed US proxies.
"Yet the cost of the war has been very high for the American people (and unimaginably high for Iraqis): Over a quarter million physical and mental casualties among US troops; two trillion dollars and counting in military expenditures crippling the US economy and a vast and growing army of Islamist and nationalist rebels opposing US interests throughout the region.
"The Israeli power configuration within the US led the US into a war which enhanced Israel's dominance of the Middle East and accelerated its annexation of Palestinian land. But Israeli ambition for total regional power is not complete. It still faces a formidable opponent to its conquest of the Middle East: Iran remains a staunch supporter of the people and national sovereignty of Palestine, Syria and Lebanon.
"The regime of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, backed by the entire Israeli political opposition and the majority of the Jewish electorate, has been aggressively pushing for a US confrontation with Iran - through economic and eventually military warfare.
"There have been scores of public and private meetings in the US and elsewhere where Netanyahu's regime 'informed' (or rather dictated to) the entire Zionist power configuration to launch an economic and military attack against Iran with the open aim of 'regime change' and the ultimate aim of breaking up and destroying the Islamic Republic - similar to the destruction of Iraq, Libya, and now Syria."
Part 2 to follow...
Tuesday, August 11, 2015
Obama: No More Wars for Israel
The Iraq War theses of James Petras (The Power of Israel in the United States, 2006), John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt (The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy, 2007), and Stephen Sniegoski (The Transparent Cabal, 2008) have just been vindicated by Barack Obama. (My clarifications in brackets):
"Between now and the congressional vote in September, you're going to hear a lot of arguments against this deal, backed by tens of millions of dollars in advertising. [Hello, Israel Lobby!] And if the rhetoric in these ads, and the accompanying commentary, sounds familiar, it should - for many of the same people who argued for the war in Iraq are now making the case against the Iran nuclear deal. [Hello, Ziocons!] Now, when I ran for President, 8 years ago as a candidate who had opposed the decision to go to war in Iraq, I said that America didn't just have to end that war - we had to end the mindset that got us there in the first place. [Hello, Ziocons!] It was a mindset characterized by a preference for military action over diplomacy; a mindset that put a premium on unilateral US action over the painstaking work of building international consensus; a mindset that exaggerated threats beyond what the intelligence supported." (Remarks by the President on the Iran Nuclear Deal, American University, Washington, DC, 5/8/15)
"Between now and the congressional vote in September, you're going to hear a lot of arguments against this deal, backed by tens of millions of dollars in advertising. [Hello, Israel Lobby!] And if the rhetoric in these ads, and the accompanying commentary, sounds familiar, it should - for many of the same people who argued for the war in Iraq are now making the case against the Iran nuclear deal. [Hello, Ziocons!] Now, when I ran for President, 8 years ago as a candidate who had opposed the decision to go to war in Iraq, I said that America didn't just have to end that war - we had to end the mindset that got us there in the first place. [Hello, Ziocons!] It was a mindset characterized by a preference for military action over diplomacy; a mindset that put a premium on unilateral US action over the painstaking work of building international consensus; a mindset that exaggerated threats beyond what the intelligence supported." (Remarks by the President on the Iran Nuclear Deal, American University, Washington, DC, 5/8/15)
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Syria in a Nutshell
From James Petras' latest essay, The Obama Regime's Military Metaphysics Rejects Diplomatic Opportunities, 23/8/13:
"For years Bashar Assad worked closely with the US in (1) curbing Al Qaeda terrorists; (2) preventing cross border attacks in Israel; (3) denying sanctuary for insurgents fighting against the US occupation of Iraq; (4) complying with US policy by withdrawing troops from Lebanon.
"Syria was a 'co-operative adversary', maintaining regional stability and a tolerant multi-ethno-religious state in a region riven by Islamist and Zionist sectarian violence. But Washington under Obama magnified their differences and prioritized the policy of establishing a submissive client state. Instead of continuing a policy of diplomatic pressure and tactical collaboration, Obama joined an unholy alliance of Persian Gulf Islamic autocracies, ex-colonial European powers (especially France and England), Israel's secret service (Mossad), and Turkey's Islamist President Erdogan in arming, training, financing, and providing sanctuary to Islamist mercenaries led by Al Qaeda brigades.
"As a result, Syria is now riven by conflict, its economy has been destroyed, security is non-existant, and millions of Syrians have fled to Iraq, Jordan, Turkey and beyond. Thousands of jihadists have journeyed from afar to Syria's neighbors to receive arms, training and paychecks in pursuit of a Taliban-style regime in Syria as a springboard to destabilise pro-US client states in the region. Turkey's and Egypt's (under Morsi) intervention on behalf of the Islamist uprising helped provoke internal mass popular protests, weakening these US collaborator regimes.
"Obama's 'all-or-nothing' attempt to establish a client regime in Syria through [Islamist] violence has produced a no-win situation: either Assad retains power as a less cooperative adversary or the Islamist terrorists establish a regime that serves as a springboard for two, three, many caliphates." (petras.lahaine.org)
Meanwhile, back at the quarry, a certain US client state receives its orders:
"The bipartisan position [of send in the UN inspectors] emerged after briefings on Syria over the weekend from the US ambassador to Australia, Jeffrey Bleich, and top officials." (Bipartisan response to Syrian chemical attack, David Crowe, The Australian, 26/8/13)
[PS - 30/8: "After initially insisting that Syria give UN investigators unimpeded access to the site of an alleged nerve gas attack, the administration of President Barack Obama reversed its position on Sunday and tried unsuccessfully to get the UN to call off its investigation." (In rush to strike Syria, US tries to derail UN probe, Gareth Porter, ipsnews.net, 27/8/13)]
"For years Bashar Assad worked closely with the US in (1) curbing Al Qaeda terrorists; (2) preventing cross border attacks in Israel; (3) denying sanctuary for insurgents fighting against the US occupation of Iraq; (4) complying with US policy by withdrawing troops from Lebanon.
"Syria was a 'co-operative adversary', maintaining regional stability and a tolerant multi-ethno-religious state in a region riven by Islamist and Zionist sectarian violence. But Washington under Obama magnified their differences and prioritized the policy of establishing a submissive client state. Instead of continuing a policy of diplomatic pressure and tactical collaboration, Obama joined an unholy alliance of Persian Gulf Islamic autocracies, ex-colonial European powers (especially France and England), Israel's secret service (Mossad), and Turkey's Islamist President Erdogan in arming, training, financing, and providing sanctuary to Islamist mercenaries led by Al Qaeda brigades.
"As a result, Syria is now riven by conflict, its economy has been destroyed, security is non-existant, and millions of Syrians have fled to Iraq, Jordan, Turkey and beyond. Thousands of jihadists have journeyed from afar to Syria's neighbors to receive arms, training and paychecks in pursuit of a Taliban-style regime in Syria as a springboard to destabilise pro-US client states in the region. Turkey's and Egypt's (under Morsi) intervention on behalf of the Islamist uprising helped provoke internal mass popular protests, weakening these US collaborator regimes.
"Obama's 'all-or-nothing' attempt to establish a client regime in Syria through [Islamist] violence has produced a no-win situation: either Assad retains power as a less cooperative adversary or the Islamist terrorists establish a regime that serves as a springboard for two, three, many caliphates." (petras.lahaine.org)
Meanwhile, back at the quarry, a certain US client state receives its orders:
"The bipartisan position [of send in the UN inspectors] emerged after briefings on Syria over the weekend from the US ambassador to Australia, Jeffrey Bleich, and top officials." (Bipartisan response to Syrian chemical attack, David Crowe, The Australian, 26/8/13)
[PS - 30/8: "After initially insisting that Syria give UN investigators unimpeded access to the site of an alleged nerve gas attack, the administration of President Barack Obama reversed its position on Sunday and tried unsuccessfully to get the UN to call off its investigation." (In rush to strike Syria, US tries to derail UN probe, Gareth Porter, ipsnews.net, 27/8/13)]
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Chomsky: Let Them Learn Swahili First
In a 14 December letter to the Australian (where else?), a James Miller of Woolloomooloo, NSW, wrote in part:
"On what basis does the University of Sydney lend institutional support to a group with a guiding objective of boycotting Jewish business and cultural institutions? In case university leaders are interested, even that virulently pro-Palestinian, Noam Chomsky... considers the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement with its boycott of Israeli universities as pure anti-Semitism, aimed at the destruction of Israel. Chomsky further characterises the BDS movement as inimical to the interests of and lacking any genuine support from the Palestinian people."
The really interesting thing here is not Miller's par-for-the-course substitution of the word Jewish for the word Israeli, but his use of Leftist icon, Noam Chomsky, as ammunition for his attack on the BDS movement. Improbable as it may seem, there is some truth in Miller's claim that Chomsky has labelled BDS as anti-Semitic. While not quite as categorical as Miller would have us believe, Chomsky has, sadly, set the table for an anti-BDS feeding frenzy by Zionist propagandists such as Miller.
This came in the context of a 2/9/10 interview with Frank Barat, during which Chomsky characterised the 2005 call for BDS by Palestinian NGOs, with its three goals of an end to the occupation, equal rights for Palestinian Israelis, and support for the Palestinian right of return as a call for the "destruction of Israel," adding "it's a gift to the Israeli and US hardliners, they know perfectly well there's not going to be an implementation of the right of return." He further claimed that the call was grossly "hypocritical" because Israeli crimes are a mere "fragment of US crimes or English crimes or those in any other country," which he assessed as "100 times worse." He then went on to say (and here is the nub of Miller's propaganda) that a 2002 call at M.I.T to divest from Israeli universities "could and was attacked as pure anti-Semitism, unfortunately with justice." Rather than elaborate on this bizarre statement, however, Chomsky went on to complain that "the issue of anti-Semitism, which around here doesn't exist," unfortunately came to overshadow the issue of the Palestinians who were being hammered badly by Sharon at the time. A more appropriate target for action, he averred , would have been the ending of US arms sales to Israel. Finally, he suggested that more needed to be done to educate the American public before the BDS "tactic" was deployed.
Not quite what Miller makes it out to be, of course, but certainly grist for his mill. So let us examine Chomsky's words more closely:
Destruction of Israel? What does Chomsky mean here? Could he have been referring to the old 'driving the Jews into the sea' line (and BTW, what victim of settler-colonialism has not fantasised about driving his oppressors into the sea or wherever at some stage?). Or to the dismantling of Israel's apartheid laws, transforming it from a Jewish state into a state for all of its people, including dispossessed Palestinian refugees? Whatever he meant, he sure handed a gift to those Israeli and US hardliners he was so concerned should not be so lucky. Talk about loose lips!
They know perfectly well there's not going to be an implementation of the right of return? Presumably, 'they' are the Israeli and US hardliners, but what a strange way of putting it. Is he really indicating that he opposes the Palestinian right of return? If so, what other parts of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (the Palestinian right of return being simply a reflection of Article 13) would he also oppose? And if not... what the hell is he getting at? Where's the clarity here?
Israeli crimes are a mere fraction of US crimes? Maybe so. But surely this is little consolation to Palestinians who have lost everything. Can you really imagine a Palestinian reflecting thus: Oh well, Chomsky says the US has done much worse to folks on the other side of the planet so what have I really got to complain about? Had an adjacent Palestinian groaned audibly at this point, I for one could not have faulted him/her.
Re the false allegation of anti-Semitism: while I can perhaps understand Chomsky's reluctance to giving those 'hardliners' a free kick (which, as I've already intimated is exactly what he's done in this interview), surely he can't be unaware that any criticism of Israel, no matter how meek and mild, can trigger this obscene smear? Moreover, the fact that he can say, at one and the same time, that the allegation was justified but that there's no anti-Semitism at M.I.T. suggests a concerning capacity for muddled thinking in one so lauded.
Fast forward to Chomsky's visit to Gaza in October this year, where he was interviewed by Rami Almeghari, in part on his position on BDS. Suffice it to say that only one of the above points is revisited. And guess which one. He begins by making two points: boycotts should be highly selective and should help rather than hinder those they're designed to help, in this case the Palestinian people. He then goes on to say this:
"If you call for an academic boycott of say Tel Aviv University you have to ask yourself what the consequences are of that call for the Palestinians and there's an indirect answer. When you carry out an act in the United States, you are trying to reach the American population and [make it] more supportive of Palestinian rights and [more] opposed to Israeli and US policies. So you ask yourself: what effect will an academic boycott of Tel Aviv University have on [an] American audience... [and] that depends on the amount of organization and education that has taken place in the United States. Today, if you look at [American's] understandings and beliefs, a call for an academic boycott of Tel Aviv University [would only] strengthen support for Israel and US policy because it's not understood. There is no point talking to people in Swahili if they don't understand what you're saying." (Chomsky in Gaza: academic boycott will strengthen support for Israel', Electronic Intifada, 20/10/12)
That's right, over two years after the first interview, Americans are still not ready for BDS! How long then must the Palestinians and their supporters wait for Americans to learn Swahili before they advocate a boycott of Israel's academic institutions? Like, forever?
The question arises: Just where is Chomsky coming from here? I'm inclined to agree with James Petras' assessment:
"Noam Chomsky has been called the leading US intellectual by pundits and even some sectors of the mass media. He has a large audience throughout the world, especially in academic circles, in large part because of his vocal criticism of US foreign policy and many of the injustices resulting from those policies. Chomsky has been reviled by all of the major Jewish and pro-Israel organizations and media for his criticism of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, even as he has defended the existence of the Zionist state of Israel. Despite his respected reputation for documenting, dissecting and exposing the hypocrisy of the US and European regimes and acutely analyzing the intellectual deceptions of imperial apologists, these analytical virtues are totally absent when it comes to discussing the formulation of US foreign policy in the Middle East particularly the role of his own ethnic group, or the Jewish pro-Israel Lobby and their Zionist supporters in the government. This political blindness is not unknown or uncommon. History is replete with intellectual critics of all imperialisms except their own, staunch opponents of the abuses of power by others, but not of one's own kin and kind." (from Noam Chomsky & the Pro-Israel Lobby: Fifteen Erroneous Theses, in The Power of Israel in the United States, 2006, pp 168-169)
Petras' essay on Chomsky should be required reading for any progressive with a serious interest in this subject.
STOP PRESS: This letter from Chomsky appeared in yesterday's Australian:
"I was surprised to read a letter to the editor of The Australian claiming that I regard the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement's tactics targeting Israel as 'pure anti-Semitism, aimed at the destruction of Israel' and that I said BDS efforts are 'inimical to the interests of and lacking any genuine support from the Palestinian people.' (Letters, 14/12). These tactics have enormous support among Palestinians, and the charge of anti-Semitism should be dismissed with disdain. When Human Rights Watch 'calls on the US and European Union member states and on businesses with operations in settlement areas to avoid supporting Israeli settlement policies that are inherently discriminatory and that violate international law', it is advocating BDS tactics, rightly, and there is no hint of anti-Semitism. I have personally been involved in such forms of opposition to the Israel occupation for years, long before there was a BDS movement. Any tactics, however legitimate, can of course be misused. But they can also be used quite properly and effectively against state crimes, and in this case regularly have been."
"On what basis does the University of Sydney lend institutional support to a group with a guiding objective of boycotting Jewish business and cultural institutions? In case university leaders are interested, even that virulently pro-Palestinian, Noam Chomsky... considers the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement with its boycott of Israeli universities as pure anti-Semitism, aimed at the destruction of Israel. Chomsky further characterises the BDS movement as inimical to the interests of and lacking any genuine support from the Palestinian people."
The really interesting thing here is not Miller's par-for-the-course substitution of the word Jewish for the word Israeli, but his use of Leftist icon, Noam Chomsky, as ammunition for his attack on the BDS movement. Improbable as it may seem, there is some truth in Miller's claim that Chomsky has labelled BDS as anti-Semitic. While not quite as categorical as Miller would have us believe, Chomsky has, sadly, set the table for an anti-BDS feeding frenzy by Zionist propagandists such as Miller.
This came in the context of a 2/9/10 interview with Frank Barat, during which Chomsky characterised the 2005 call for BDS by Palestinian NGOs, with its three goals of an end to the occupation, equal rights for Palestinian Israelis, and support for the Palestinian right of return as a call for the "destruction of Israel," adding "it's a gift to the Israeli and US hardliners, they know perfectly well there's not going to be an implementation of the right of return." He further claimed that the call was grossly "hypocritical" because Israeli crimes are a mere "fragment of US crimes or English crimes or those in any other country," which he assessed as "100 times worse." He then went on to say (and here is the nub of Miller's propaganda) that a 2002 call at M.I.T to divest from Israeli universities "could and was attacked as pure anti-Semitism, unfortunately with justice." Rather than elaborate on this bizarre statement, however, Chomsky went on to complain that "the issue of anti-Semitism, which around here doesn't exist," unfortunately came to overshadow the issue of the Palestinians who were being hammered badly by Sharon at the time. A more appropriate target for action, he averred , would have been the ending of US arms sales to Israel. Finally, he suggested that more needed to be done to educate the American public before the BDS "tactic" was deployed.
Not quite what Miller makes it out to be, of course, but certainly grist for his mill. So let us examine Chomsky's words more closely:
Destruction of Israel? What does Chomsky mean here? Could he have been referring to the old 'driving the Jews into the sea' line (and BTW, what victim of settler-colonialism has not fantasised about driving his oppressors into the sea or wherever at some stage?). Or to the dismantling of Israel's apartheid laws, transforming it from a Jewish state into a state for all of its people, including dispossessed Palestinian refugees? Whatever he meant, he sure handed a gift to those Israeli and US hardliners he was so concerned should not be so lucky. Talk about loose lips!
They know perfectly well there's not going to be an implementation of the right of return? Presumably, 'they' are the Israeli and US hardliners, but what a strange way of putting it. Is he really indicating that he opposes the Palestinian right of return? If so, what other parts of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (the Palestinian right of return being simply a reflection of Article 13) would he also oppose? And if not... what the hell is he getting at? Where's the clarity here?
Israeli crimes are a mere fraction of US crimes? Maybe so. But surely this is little consolation to Palestinians who have lost everything. Can you really imagine a Palestinian reflecting thus: Oh well, Chomsky says the US has done much worse to folks on the other side of the planet so what have I really got to complain about? Had an adjacent Palestinian groaned audibly at this point, I for one could not have faulted him/her.
Re the false allegation of anti-Semitism: while I can perhaps understand Chomsky's reluctance to giving those 'hardliners' a free kick (which, as I've already intimated is exactly what he's done in this interview), surely he can't be unaware that any criticism of Israel, no matter how meek and mild, can trigger this obscene smear? Moreover, the fact that he can say, at one and the same time, that the allegation was justified but that there's no anti-Semitism at M.I.T. suggests a concerning capacity for muddled thinking in one so lauded.
Fast forward to Chomsky's visit to Gaza in October this year, where he was interviewed by Rami Almeghari, in part on his position on BDS. Suffice it to say that only one of the above points is revisited. And guess which one. He begins by making two points: boycotts should be highly selective and should help rather than hinder those they're designed to help, in this case the Palestinian people. He then goes on to say this:
"If you call for an academic boycott of say Tel Aviv University you have to ask yourself what the consequences are of that call for the Palestinians and there's an indirect answer. When you carry out an act in the United States, you are trying to reach the American population and [make it] more supportive of Palestinian rights and [more] opposed to Israeli and US policies. So you ask yourself: what effect will an academic boycott of Tel Aviv University have on [an] American audience... [and] that depends on the amount of organization and education that has taken place in the United States. Today, if you look at [American's] understandings and beliefs, a call for an academic boycott of Tel Aviv University [would only] strengthen support for Israel and US policy because it's not understood. There is no point talking to people in Swahili if they don't understand what you're saying." (Chomsky in Gaza: academic boycott will strengthen support for Israel', Electronic Intifada, 20/10/12)
That's right, over two years after the first interview, Americans are still not ready for BDS! How long then must the Palestinians and their supporters wait for Americans to learn Swahili before they advocate a boycott of Israel's academic institutions? Like, forever?
The question arises: Just where is Chomsky coming from here? I'm inclined to agree with James Petras' assessment:
"Noam Chomsky has been called the leading US intellectual by pundits and even some sectors of the mass media. He has a large audience throughout the world, especially in academic circles, in large part because of his vocal criticism of US foreign policy and many of the injustices resulting from those policies. Chomsky has been reviled by all of the major Jewish and pro-Israel organizations and media for his criticism of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, even as he has defended the existence of the Zionist state of Israel. Despite his respected reputation for documenting, dissecting and exposing the hypocrisy of the US and European regimes and acutely analyzing the intellectual deceptions of imperial apologists, these analytical virtues are totally absent when it comes to discussing the formulation of US foreign policy in the Middle East particularly the role of his own ethnic group, or the Jewish pro-Israel Lobby and their Zionist supporters in the government. This political blindness is not unknown or uncommon. History is replete with intellectual critics of all imperialisms except their own, staunch opponents of the abuses of power by others, but not of one's own kin and kind." (from Noam Chomsky & the Pro-Israel Lobby: Fifteen Erroneous Theses, in The Power of Israel in the United States, 2006, pp 168-169)
Petras' essay on Chomsky should be required reading for any progressive with a serious interest in this subject.
STOP PRESS: This letter from Chomsky appeared in yesterday's Australian:
"I was surprised to read a letter to the editor of The Australian claiming that I regard the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement's tactics targeting Israel as 'pure anti-Semitism, aimed at the destruction of Israel' and that I said BDS efforts are 'inimical to the interests of and lacking any genuine support from the Palestinian people.' (Letters, 14/12). These tactics have enormous support among Palestinians, and the charge of anti-Semitism should be dismissed with disdain. When Human Rights Watch 'calls on the US and European Union member states and on businesses with operations in settlement areas to avoid supporting Israeli settlement policies that are inherently discriminatory and that violate international law', it is advocating BDS tactics, rightly, and there is no hint of anti-Semitism. I have personally been involved in such forms of opposition to the Israel occupation for years, long before there was a BDS movement. Any tactics, however legitimate, can of course be misused. But they can also be used quite properly and effectively against state crimes, and in this case regularly have been."
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
The Summer of Muslim Discontent 7: Conclusion
Concluding an Arab Spring update from James Petras' latest (21/9/12) essay...
"Faced with a sharp and militant backlash to its ongoing counter-revolutionary offensive in the Muslim world, Washington is demanding that its 'new' Muslim client regimes increase 'security' by strengthening the police state apparatus and cracking down on on mass protest movements. Washington is once again on the defensive.
"In the first phase of the revolutionary process, dubbed the 'Arab Spring', Washington and its EU allies were caught by surprise and severely challenged by the mass pro-democracy movements which overthrew or threatened their client rulers in Tunisia, Egypt, Somalia, Yemen, Bahrain and elsewhere.
"In the second, counter-revolutionary phase, Washington and its allies sought to countermand, halt and reverse the popular pro-democracy movements through alliances with malleable Islamic leaders in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen, launching and escalating armed rebellions by Islamic extremists in Libya and Syria, and buttressing the despotic royalist regimes of the Gulf. The restoration of neo-colonial client regimes by the US and the EU, however, soon revealed its fragile foundations, the various fraudulent 'transitions' producing servile rulers incapable of and unwilling to address the socio-economic demands of the pro-democracy movements.
"The third, current, phase of the struggle presents us with a far more complex scenario than the earlier binary conflict of dictatorship vs democracy. We see conflicts between neo-liberal Islamists in power and secular and Islamic trade unionists (Egypt); poor fundamentalist Islamists fighting for the US (Syria), and against it (Libya); and secular (Syria) and Islamic (Iran) regimes joining forces against Western-backed Islamic mercenaries and threats from Israel.
"The Islamic terrain of these struggles reflects a discrediting and decimation of secular rulers and civil society organizations. Religion has become the refuge, the cloak, and the war cry of the dispossessed and the propertied classes.
"A careful study of the two decades of US and EU wars in the Muslim world finds little evidence of corporate oil interests in their conduct. They are rather imperial-military wars. Everywhere we look we see the large-scale destruction of the means of production, the massive dis-accumulation of capital, and the massive displacement of the millions of workers, scientists and engineers who produce the wealth of the area. What investors are going to make large-scale, long-term investments in places like Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Syria or Libya when their lives and property are in danger from warring ethno-religious bands armed and trained by US Special Forces? Nor do big investors find countries ruled by corrupt, servile, and unpopular US/EU client regimes an attractive proposition. Investors see in Iraq only 10 lost years and billions in oil profits down the drain. The US did not go to war for oil in Iraq as some benighted leftist pundits claim.
"Military imperialism has led to ruin and rule, followed by ruin and run. The only, and the obvious, beneficiary of these Western wars on Muslim countries has been the Jewish state of Israel whose billionaire political influentials and political acolytes in the Pentagon, Treasury, National Security Council, Congress and the mass media designed and promoted these wars. Most recently, they have promoted the US counter-attack which has turned the 'Arab Spring' into a 'Muslim Winter of Discontent'.
"There will be no end to these wars as long as Israel claims supremacy in the Arab world. The US is, and will remain, in permanent war with the Muslim world as long as its foreign policy and political structures are influenced by the Israeli power configuration.
"No previous empire has sustained such huge financial losses and gained so little in economic rewards or destroyed so many countries without establishing a single, viable, productive colonial or neo-colonial regime as the US empire. So to read or hear from most of our prominent journalists that the recent massive, widespread and violent Muslim protests against the symbols and substance of US imperial power are all about an 'amateur film defaming the Prophet' boggles the mind. The pundits ignore the fact that mass unrest and anti-imperial assaults preceded and will follow this kind of film. Given the massive round-up and detention of thousands of innocent Muslim immigrants by uber-Zionist and GW Bush Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff; the FBI surveillance and infiltration of hundreds of mosques; the Zionist-sponsored, rabble-rousing campaign in New York City against a cultural center and the purge of a Muslim educator; the rabid, weekly anti-Muslim, Christian-Zionist rants to 40 million US followers; the AIPAC-promoted US Treasury appointments and subsequent imposition of sanctions against independent Muslim countries, Muslims have a solid basis for believing that Islamophobia is embedded in US culture. And no thinking Muslim anywhere in the world believes that the film was an aberration, since Hollywood's pro-Israel film and television moguls have always demonized and caricatured Muslims, portraying them as either worthless playboy sheikhs or bloody villains.
"Obama's despatch of Marines and warships to defend US missions merely reinforces the image and reality that the US presence in the Muslim world is based on nothing more than force of arms. Nor are there any signs of critical reflection in US political circles on the larger cultural and political issues involved at home and abroad which arouse the passion and rage now spreading to 20 Muslim nations and beyond.
"Islamophobia is not simply the bad attitude of an extremist and marginalized American minority. It is part and parcel of policies which have involved the US in large-scale, ongoing wars in a dozen Muslim nations, in policing millions of US Muslims, and in arming a Jewish state which uproots Palestinians and threatens to bomb 75 million Iranian Muslims."
"Faced with a sharp and militant backlash to its ongoing counter-revolutionary offensive in the Muslim world, Washington is demanding that its 'new' Muslim client regimes increase 'security' by strengthening the police state apparatus and cracking down on on mass protest movements. Washington is once again on the defensive.
"In the first phase of the revolutionary process, dubbed the 'Arab Spring', Washington and its EU allies were caught by surprise and severely challenged by the mass pro-democracy movements which overthrew or threatened their client rulers in Tunisia, Egypt, Somalia, Yemen, Bahrain and elsewhere.
"In the second, counter-revolutionary phase, Washington and its allies sought to countermand, halt and reverse the popular pro-democracy movements through alliances with malleable Islamic leaders in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen, launching and escalating armed rebellions by Islamic extremists in Libya and Syria, and buttressing the despotic royalist regimes of the Gulf. The restoration of neo-colonial client regimes by the US and the EU, however, soon revealed its fragile foundations, the various fraudulent 'transitions' producing servile rulers incapable of and unwilling to address the socio-economic demands of the pro-democracy movements.
"The third, current, phase of the struggle presents us with a far more complex scenario than the earlier binary conflict of dictatorship vs democracy. We see conflicts between neo-liberal Islamists in power and secular and Islamic trade unionists (Egypt); poor fundamentalist Islamists fighting for the US (Syria), and against it (Libya); and secular (Syria) and Islamic (Iran) regimes joining forces against Western-backed Islamic mercenaries and threats from Israel.
"The Islamic terrain of these struggles reflects a discrediting and decimation of secular rulers and civil society organizations. Religion has become the refuge, the cloak, and the war cry of the dispossessed and the propertied classes.
"A careful study of the two decades of US and EU wars in the Muslim world finds little evidence of corporate oil interests in their conduct. They are rather imperial-military wars. Everywhere we look we see the large-scale destruction of the means of production, the massive dis-accumulation of capital, and the massive displacement of the millions of workers, scientists and engineers who produce the wealth of the area. What investors are going to make large-scale, long-term investments in places like Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Syria or Libya when their lives and property are in danger from warring ethno-religious bands armed and trained by US Special Forces? Nor do big investors find countries ruled by corrupt, servile, and unpopular US/EU client regimes an attractive proposition. Investors see in Iraq only 10 lost years and billions in oil profits down the drain. The US did not go to war for oil in Iraq as some benighted leftist pundits claim.
"Military imperialism has led to ruin and rule, followed by ruin and run. The only, and the obvious, beneficiary of these Western wars on Muslim countries has been the Jewish state of Israel whose billionaire political influentials and political acolytes in the Pentagon, Treasury, National Security Council, Congress and the mass media designed and promoted these wars. Most recently, they have promoted the US counter-attack which has turned the 'Arab Spring' into a 'Muslim Winter of Discontent'.
"There will be no end to these wars as long as Israel claims supremacy in the Arab world. The US is, and will remain, in permanent war with the Muslim world as long as its foreign policy and political structures are influenced by the Israeli power configuration.
"No previous empire has sustained such huge financial losses and gained so little in economic rewards or destroyed so many countries without establishing a single, viable, productive colonial or neo-colonial regime as the US empire. So to read or hear from most of our prominent journalists that the recent massive, widespread and violent Muslim protests against the symbols and substance of US imperial power are all about an 'amateur film defaming the Prophet' boggles the mind. The pundits ignore the fact that mass unrest and anti-imperial assaults preceded and will follow this kind of film. Given the massive round-up and detention of thousands of innocent Muslim immigrants by uber-Zionist and GW Bush Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff; the FBI surveillance and infiltration of hundreds of mosques; the Zionist-sponsored, rabble-rousing campaign in New York City against a cultural center and the purge of a Muslim educator; the rabid, weekly anti-Muslim, Christian-Zionist rants to 40 million US followers; the AIPAC-promoted US Treasury appointments and subsequent imposition of sanctions against independent Muslim countries, Muslims have a solid basis for believing that Islamophobia is embedded in US culture. And no thinking Muslim anywhere in the world believes that the film was an aberration, since Hollywood's pro-Israel film and television moguls have always demonized and caricatured Muslims, portraying them as either worthless playboy sheikhs or bloody villains.
"Obama's despatch of Marines and warships to defend US missions merely reinforces the image and reality that the US presence in the Muslim world is based on nothing more than force of arms. Nor are there any signs of critical reflection in US political circles on the larger cultural and political issues involved at home and abroad which arouse the passion and rage now spreading to 20 Muslim nations and beyond.
"Islamophobia is not simply the bad attitude of an extremist and marginalized American minority. It is part and parcel of policies which have involved the US in large-scale, ongoing wars in a dozen Muslim nations, in policing millions of US Muslims, and in arming a Jewish state which uproots Palestinians and threatens to bomb 75 million Iranian Muslims."
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
The Summer of Muslim Discontent 6: Somalia, Sudan, Pakistan
Continuing an Arab Spring update from James Petras' latest (21/9/12) essay...
"Massive and violent protests against the US embassy have taken place in Somalia and Sudan. Washington has been heavily involved, militarily, in Somalia for over 2 decades, moving from an initial failed military occupation to the financing of African military surrogates, including Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda. It has also engaged in drone warfare. As a result of this intervention, Somalia is a divided, destroyed and destitute country, where piracy flourishes and three quarters of the population are refugees. The 'film protests' are merely the tip of an ongoing war of national liberation pitting radical Islamists against Western-backed surrogates and the 'moderate' Muslim puppet regime of Sharif Sheik Ahmad.
"Sudan was the site of a massive protest and violent attacks on the US and European embassies. The ruling elite, subjected to US and EU sanctions and a Washington/Tel Aviv-funded armed separatist movement in the oil-rich south, was forced to sign off on an accord which cut its oil revenues by 80%. As a result of its appeasement of the Western-backed separatist surrogate, living standards in Khartoum have plunged, inflation is rife, unemployment is on the rise and the regime has turned its guns from the separatists to its own people. The attacks on the US embassy, therefore, have more to do with the division of the country and its impoverishment than with 'the film' itself. At most the latter served as a trigger igniting a profound frustration with a regime which had once upheld the national integrity of the country but of late has sacrificed its natural wealth to curry favour with Washington.
"Pakistan was the site of mass popular protests in both its urban centres and in its north-western periphery. Embassy attacks and flag-burnings reflected an ongoing and deepening resentment against over a decade of US ground and aerial intrusions, violating Pakistani sovereignty. The drone bombing of dozens of 'tribal villages' has aroused the rage of millions. The US war against Islamic strongholds, its armed intrusion to capture bin Laden and its billion dollar funding of massive Pakistani military sweeps has led to thousands of deaths and millions of refugees. Pakistan is a country seething with anger and deep hostility to anything associated with the US. The film merely fed into this cauldron of growing militant, religious and nationalist discontent. For the convicted felon, pro-US President Asif Ali Zardari, the protests have no credibility whatever: he is simply marking time before he is ousted.
"Lesser protests against 'the film' took place in Malaysia, Indonesia, Nigeria and elsewhere where the US has been less ubiquitous in its interference in the political and military order.
"The size, scope and violence of the 'film protests' correlate highly with the depth of destruction and destitution brought about by direct US military and political intervention."
Next post in the series: Conclusion...
"Massive and violent protests against the US embassy have taken place in Somalia and Sudan. Washington has been heavily involved, militarily, in Somalia for over 2 decades, moving from an initial failed military occupation to the financing of African military surrogates, including Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda. It has also engaged in drone warfare. As a result of this intervention, Somalia is a divided, destroyed and destitute country, where piracy flourishes and three quarters of the population are refugees. The 'film protests' are merely the tip of an ongoing war of national liberation pitting radical Islamists against Western-backed surrogates and the 'moderate' Muslim puppet regime of Sharif Sheik Ahmad.
"Sudan was the site of a massive protest and violent attacks on the US and European embassies. The ruling elite, subjected to US and EU sanctions and a Washington/Tel Aviv-funded armed separatist movement in the oil-rich south, was forced to sign off on an accord which cut its oil revenues by 80%. As a result of its appeasement of the Western-backed separatist surrogate, living standards in Khartoum have plunged, inflation is rife, unemployment is on the rise and the regime has turned its guns from the separatists to its own people. The attacks on the US embassy, therefore, have more to do with the division of the country and its impoverishment than with 'the film' itself. At most the latter served as a trigger igniting a profound frustration with a regime which had once upheld the national integrity of the country but of late has sacrificed its natural wealth to curry favour with Washington.
"Pakistan was the site of mass popular protests in both its urban centres and in its north-western periphery. Embassy attacks and flag-burnings reflected an ongoing and deepening resentment against over a decade of US ground and aerial intrusions, violating Pakistani sovereignty. The drone bombing of dozens of 'tribal villages' has aroused the rage of millions. The US war against Islamic strongholds, its armed intrusion to capture bin Laden and its billion dollar funding of massive Pakistani military sweeps has led to thousands of deaths and millions of refugees. Pakistan is a country seething with anger and deep hostility to anything associated with the US. The film merely fed into this cauldron of growing militant, religious and nationalist discontent. For the convicted felon, pro-US President Asif Ali Zardari, the protests have no credibility whatever: he is simply marking time before he is ousted.
"Lesser protests against 'the film' took place in Malaysia, Indonesia, Nigeria and elsewhere where the US has been less ubiquitous in its interference in the political and military order.
"The size, scope and violence of the 'film protests' correlate highly with the depth of destruction and destitution brought about by direct US military and political intervention."
Next post in the series: Conclusion...
Monday, October 15, 2012
The Summer of Muslim Discontent 5: Tunisia
Continuing an Arab Spring update from James Petras' latest (21/9/12) essay...
"In the case of Tunisia, Washington and the EU leveraged the Islamic Ennahda Party into power in order to abort the pro-democracy transformation. Subsequently, they heavily subsidized the 'free-market' Moncef Marzouki regime which has totally ignored the basic demands which led to the uprising: mass unemployment, the concentration of wealth, and subservience to US-EU foreign policy with regard to Palestine, Libya and Syria. The Islamic regime and party played the usual double game of condemning 'the film' and smashing the protest, knowing full well that the street protest could ignite a much more significant demonstration against the regime's total neglect of the Tunisian uprising's original democratic socio-economic agenda."
Next post in the series: Somalia, Sudan & Pakistan...
"In the case of Tunisia, Washington and the EU leveraged the Islamic Ennahda Party into power in order to abort the pro-democracy transformation. Subsequently, they heavily subsidized the 'free-market' Moncef Marzouki regime which has totally ignored the basic demands which led to the uprising: mass unemployment, the concentration of wealth, and subservience to US-EU foreign policy with regard to Palestine, Libya and Syria. The Islamic regime and party played the usual double game of condemning 'the film' and smashing the protest, knowing full well that the street protest could ignite a much more significant demonstration against the regime's total neglect of the Tunisian uprising's original democratic socio-economic agenda."
Next post in the series: Somalia, Sudan & Pakistan...
Thursday, October 11, 2012
The Summer of Muslim Discontent 4: Yemen
Continuing an Arab Spring update from James Petras' latest (21/9/12) essay...
"The seizure of the US Embassy in Yemen followed 33 years of US arming and financial backing of the brutal Ali Abdullah Saleh dictatorship, months of drone warfare and the repression of mass peaceful protests. The ongoing pro-democracy movement in Yemen, which attained massive proportions, has been blocked by US-Saudi intervention, leaving in its wake thousands of dead, wounded and jailed Yemeni citizens. The seizure of the US Embassy, ostensibly over 'the film', had far deeper and more comprehensive causes: popular discontent with the decades-long US-Yemen alliance and a phony US-promoted 'democratic transition'. As in Egypt and Tunisia, changes in personnel are designed to save the client state apparatus (police, military, judiciary), the mainstay of US and Saudi power in the Gulf region, while sacrificing the incumbent dictator. In all such 'transitions' the US and EU rely on pliable and servile Muslim politicians in order to harness local religious beliefs to their neo-liberal and pro-imperial policies."
Next post in the series: Tunisia...
"The seizure of the US Embassy in Yemen followed 33 years of US arming and financial backing of the brutal Ali Abdullah Saleh dictatorship, months of drone warfare and the repression of mass peaceful protests. The ongoing pro-democracy movement in Yemen, which attained massive proportions, has been blocked by US-Saudi intervention, leaving in its wake thousands of dead, wounded and jailed Yemeni citizens. The seizure of the US Embassy, ostensibly over 'the film', had far deeper and more comprehensive causes: popular discontent with the decades-long US-Yemen alliance and a phony US-promoted 'democratic transition'. As in Egypt and Tunisia, changes in personnel are designed to save the client state apparatus (police, military, judiciary), the mainstay of US and Saudi power in the Gulf region, while sacrificing the incumbent dictator. In all such 'transitions' the US and EU rely on pliable and servile Muslim politicians in order to harness local religious beliefs to their neo-liberal and pro-imperial policies."
Next post in the series: Tunisia...
Sunday, October 7, 2012
The Summer of Muslim Discontent 3: Libya
Continuing an Arab Spring update from James Petras' latest (21/9/12) essay...
Libya
"The Obama regime led the aerial and maritime war that devastated Libya's economy, destroyed its national integrity, and allowed a plethora of foreign and domestic fundamentalist terrorist groups to seize control over vast regions of the country. [7] Washington and the EU parachuted a motley group of client ex-pats into government - without any supporting state institutions. The Islamic fundamentalists, tribalists, monarchists, clans, gangs and other local warlords, funded, armed and imported to overthrow Gadhafi by Washington and the EU, did so much more, destroying the entire fabric of organized civil society, the state and public authority. In the face of a chaotic, Hobbesian world of warring fiefdoms, many people turned to their primary groups - family, clan, religious authorities - for minimum protection in the home, street and workplace. The assault on the US consulate was only one of thousands of violent assaults against property and national, regional and local authorities. [8] The police, the military and the ministries have been infiltrated by competing, armed religious and secular factions seeking to secure scarce oil revenues for their particular group.
"The consulate protest and the assassination of the US ambassador and Special Forces personnel was merely the most publicized act of violence spawned by US and EU military intervention. They thought, either out of total ignorance, naivete or just plain arrogance, that they could arm the fundamentalists to do the dirty work of knocking off Gadhafi and that, once that had been accomplished, they could be discarded like a used condom (or shipped off to Syria as shock troops) and replaced by neo-liberal technocrats who would run the country as a Western client state, turning the oil fields over to US and EU oil companies. Instead, Washington and the EU have alienated all sections of Libyan society: the millions who benefited from the stable, secure, secular and prosperous Libya of Gadhafi; the mass of armed Muslim fanatics who demand an Islamic state and feel that their sacrifices have been ignored; and the warlords and contrabandists of arms who demand respect for their territorial acquisitions. [9] And above all, the vast majority of Libyans who have been impoverished by the war and who looked on with indifference or even satisfaction as the armed gangs stormed the consulate. The violent protest over the amateur film denigrating the Prophet was clearly only the pretext for the discharge of a vast accumulation of popular and elite grievances resulting from armed Western intervention."
[7: Financial Times 13/9/12; 8: FT 13/9/12; 9: Mel Frykberg, Consulate was just the latest in rising violence in Libya, McClatchy, 12/9/12]
Next post in the series: Yemen...
Libya
"The Obama regime led the aerial and maritime war that devastated Libya's economy, destroyed its national integrity, and allowed a plethora of foreign and domestic fundamentalist terrorist groups to seize control over vast regions of the country. [7] Washington and the EU parachuted a motley group of client ex-pats into government - without any supporting state institutions. The Islamic fundamentalists, tribalists, monarchists, clans, gangs and other local warlords, funded, armed and imported to overthrow Gadhafi by Washington and the EU, did so much more, destroying the entire fabric of organized civil society, the state and public authority. In the face of a chaotic, Hobbesian world of warring fiefdoms, many people turned to their primary groups - family, clan, religious authorities - for minimum protection in the home, street and workplace. The assault on the US consulate was only one of thousands of violent assaults against property and national, regional and local authorities. [8] The police, the military and the ministries have been infiltrated by competing, armed religious and secular factions seeking to secure scarce oil revenues for their particular group.
"The consulate protest and the assassination of the US ambassador and Special Forces personnel was merely the most publicized act of violence spawned by US and EU military intervention. They thought, either out of total ignorance, naivete or just plain arrogance, that they could arm the fundamentalists to do the dirty work of knocking off Gadhafi and that, once that had been accomplished, they could be discarded like a used condom (or shipped off to Syria as shock troops) and replaced by neo-liberal technocrats who would run the country as a Western client state, turning the oil fields over to US and EU oil companies. Instead, Washington and the EU have alienated all sections of Libyan society: the millions who benefited from the stable, secure, secular and prosperous Libya of Gadhafi; the mass of armed Muslim fanatics who demand an Islamic state and feel that their sacrifices have been ignored; and the warlords and contrabandists of arms who demand respect for their territorial acquisitions. [9] And above all, the vast majority of Libyans who have been impoverished by the war and who looked on with indifference or even satisfaction as the armed gangs stormed the consulate. The violent protest over the amateur film denigrating the Prophet was clearly only the pretext for the discharge of a vast accumulation of popular and elite grievances resulting from armed Western intervention."
[7: Financial Times 13/9/12; 8: FT 13/9/12; 9: Mel Frykberg, Consulate was just the latest in rising violence in Libya, McClatchy, 12/9/12]
Next post in the series: Yemen...
Saturday, October 6, 2012
The Summer of Muslim Discontent 2: Egypt
Continuing an Arab Spring update from James Petras' latest (21/9/12) essay...
Egypt: The Making of a Client State
"From day one, in February 2011, Washington has sought in every way to prop up the Mubarak dictatorship as thousands of protesters fighting for freedom in the major plazas and streets of Egypt were killed, wounded or jailed. When Mubarak was forced out of power, Washington sought to retain its influence by turning to his generals and backed the military junta which seized power. As the military dictatorship became the target of huge pro-democracy demonstrations, Washington backed a political power-sharing agreement between the dominant pro-Western neo-liberal sector of the Muslim Brotherhood and the military, excluding all but the most superficial democratic and socio-economic reforms demanded by the poor and the working and middle classes.
"With the election of President Mohammed Morsi, Washington secured the most fervent advocate of savage 'free market' capitalism and the second best (after Mubarak) advocate of retaining Egypt's status as a US client state in the Middle East. Morsi, following in the footsteps of Mubarak, and in accordance with Washington and Tel Aviv, closed the trade routes between Gaza and Sinai and travelled to the Non-Aligned Movement in Tehran to deliver the Saudi-Gulf message calling for support for the Western-backed armed mercenaries ravaging Syria. Later he announced plans to privatize the public sector corporations, reduce the deficit by eliminating basic subsidies to the poor, de-regulate the economy to increase the flow of foreign capital and end labor strikes. [3] As a reward for his servility, and to ease the process of remaking Egypt as a pliable Western client state, Washington, Saudi Arabia, the IMF, Qatar and the EU have offered Morsi over $20 billion in loans, debt relief and grants. [4] Morsi's rule depends on playing the 'spiritual card' to retain the support of the impoverished Muslim masses while pursuing a staunch neo-liberal economic strategy and neo-colonial foreign policy.
"Given the recent revolutionary pro-democracy and nationalist fervor, Morsi looks for ways to deflect rising socio-economic discontent with his neo-liberal economic policies by adopting an apparently pious Muslim posture, condemning 'the film' ridiculing the Prophet and tolerating assaults on the US embassy in Cairo, which angered Clinton and Obama who expect total subservience toward the symbols and substance of everything US. [5]
"From Morsi's perspective, a one-day blow-off of steam aimed at the US embassy was a small price to pay for implementing his larger agenda of putting an end to the revolutionary democratic and nationalist aspirations of the masses who overthrew Mubarak, especially when he has every intention of 'continuing [Mubarak's] economic agenda with a stated policy to battle corruption.' [6] The Egyptian people, Muslim and secular, are profoundly disenchanted with the Brotherhood's betrayal of their promises of welfare, jobs, prosperity and a nationalist foreign policy. The 'film' was in reality about the larger socio-economic and political cleavages emerging, and the tremendous boost in US influence, in Morsi's Egypt."
[3: Borzou Daragahi, Investment drive aims to boost US influence in Morsi's Egypt, Financial Times, 10/9/12; 4: ibid; 5: FT 13/9/12 6: FT 10/9/12]
Next post in the series: Libya...
Egypt: The Making of a Client State
"From day one, in February 2011, Washington has sought in every way to prop up the Mubarak dictatorship as thousands of protesters fighting for freedom in the major plazas and streets of Egypt were killed, wounded or jailed. When Mubarak was forced out of power, Washington sought to retain its influence by turning to his generals and backed the military junta which seized power. As the military dictatorship became the target of huge pro-democracy demonstrations, Washington backed a political power-sharing agreement between the dominant pro-Western neo-liberal sector of the Muslim Brotherhood and the military, excluding all but the most superficial democratic and socio-economic reforms demanded by the poor and the working and middle classes.
"With the election of President Mohammed Morsi, Washington secured the most fervent advocate of savage 'free market' capitalism and the second best (after Mubarak) advocate of retaining Egypt's status as a US client state in the Middle East. Morsi, following in the footsteps of Mubarak, and in accordance with Washington and Tel Aviv, closed the trade routes between Gaza and Sinai and travelled to the Non-Aligned Movement in Tehran to deliver the Saudi-Gulf message calling for support for the Western-backed armed mercenaries ravaging Syria. Later he announced plans to privatize the public sector corporations, reduce the deficit by eliminating basic subsidies to the poor, de-regulate the economy to increase the flow of foreign capital and end labor strikes. [3] As a reward for his servility, and to ease the process of remaking Egypt as a pliable Western client state, Washington, Saudi Arabia, the IMF, Qatar and the EU have offered Morsi over $20 billion in loans, debt relief and grants. [4] Morsi's rule depends on playing the 'spiritual card' to retain the support of the impoverished Muslim masses while pursuing a staunch neo-liberal economic strategy and neo-colonial foreign policy.
"Given the recent revolutionary pro-democracy and nationalist fervor, Morsi looks for ways to deflect rising socio-economic discontent with his neo-liberal economic policies by adopting an apparently pious Muslim posture, condemning 'the film' ridiculing the Prophet and tolerating assaults on the US embassy in Cairo, which angered Clinton and Obama who expect total subservience toward the symbols and substance of everything US. [5]
"From Morsi's perspective, a one-day blow-off of steam aimed at the US embassy was a small price to pay for implementing his larger agenda of putting an end to the revolutionary democratic and nationalist aspirations of the masses who overthrew Mubarak, especially when he has every intention of 'continuing [Mubarak's] economic agenda with a stated policy to battle corruption.' [6] The Egyptian people, Muslim and secular, are profoundly disenchanted with the Brotherhood's betrayal of their promises of welfare, jobs, prosperity and a nationalist foreign policy. The 'film' was in reality about the larger socio-economic and political cleavages emerging, and the tremendous boost in US influence, in Morsi's Egypt."
[3: Borzou Daragahi, Investment drive aims to boost US influence in Morsi's Egypt, Financial Times, 10/9/12; 4: ibid; 5: FT 13/9/12 6: FT 10/9/12]
Next post in the series: Libya...
Thursday, October 4, 2012
The Summer of Muslim Discontent 1
It's not the amateur film, stupid.
An Arab Spring update from James Petras' latest (21/9/12) essay (in bite-size bits):
"The so-called Arab Spring is a distant and bitter memory to those who fought and struggled for a better world, not to speak of the thousands who lost life and limb. In its place, throughout the Muslim world, a new wave of reactionaries - corrupt and servile politicians - have taken the reins of power, buttressed by the same military, secret police and judicial power which sustained the previous rulers. Death and destruction is rampant, poverty and misery has multiplied, law and order has broken down, and retrograde thugs have seized political power, where previously they were a marginal force. Living standards have plunged, cities are devastated and commerce is paralysed. And presiding over this 'Arab Winter' are the Western powers, the US and the EU, with the aid of the despotic, absolutist Gulf monarchies, their Turkish ally, and a motley army of mercenary Islamic terrorists and their would-be exile spokespeople.
"The legacy of imperial intervention in the Muslim world during the first decade of the 21st century, in terms of lives lost, people displaced, and economies destroyed in perpetual war exceeds any previous decade, including that of the 19th and 20th century colonial conquests. Much of the latest Western-generated mayhem and violence has been compressed into the period dubbed the 'Arab Spring', between 2011 and 2012. Moreover, the worst is yet to come. The Western overseers have gained strategic positions of power in some countries (Egypt), are engaged in prolonged, ruinous wars in others (Syria), and are preparing for an even bigger and more destructive intervention in Iran.
"The 'Winter of Muslim Discontent' covers an arc from Pakistan and Afghanistan in South Asia, through the Gulf region and the Middle East to North Africa. Despite being in the throes of the worst economic crises to hit the West since the 30s, the Western imperialist regimes have squeezed their peoples and mobilized personnel, arms and money to engage in simultaneous wars in five regions and two continents, aimed at overthrowing political adversaries and installing clients, even at the cost of destroying whole economies and uprooting millions.
"Let us begin with Egypt, where the Arab Spring has become a case study in the making of the New Imperial Order in the Muslim world. To attribute the mass violent rebellions across two continents and two dozen Muslim countries to a US-made film which desecrates the Prophet Muhammad is the height of superficiality. At most the film was the trigger that set off deeply-rooted hostilities resulting from two decades of US-led ravaging and destruction of the Muslim world. More particularly, the rage flows from Washington's crude intervention against the promise of the Arab Spring."
Next post in the series: Egypt: The Making of a Client State...
An Arab Spring update from James Petras' latest (21/9/12) essay (in bite-size bits):
"The so-called Arab Spring is a distant and bitter memory to those who fought and struggled for a better world, not to speak of the thousands who lost life and limb. In its place, throughout the Muslim world, a new wave of reactionaries - corrupt and servile politicians - have taken the reins of power, buttressed by the same military, secret police and judicial power which sustained the previous rulers. Death and destruction is rampant, poverty and misery has multiplied, law and order has broken down, and retrograde thugs have seized political power, where previously they were a marginal force. Living standards have plunged, cities are devastated and commerce is paralysed. And presiding over this 'Arab Winter' are the Western powers, the US and the EU, with the aid of the despotic, absolutist Gulf monarchies, their Turkish ally, and a motley army of mercenary Islamic terrorists and their would-be exile spokespeople.
"The legacy of imperial intervention in the Muslim world during the first decade of the 21st century, in terms of lives lost, people displaced, and economies destroyed in perpetual war exceeds any previous decade, including that of the 19th and 20th century colonial conquests. Much of the latest Western-generated mayhem and violence has been compressed into the period dubbed the 'Arab Spring', between 2011 and 2012. Moreover, the worst is yet to come. The Western overseers have gained strategic positions of power in some countries (Egypt), are engaged in prolonged, ruinous wars in others (Syria), and are preparing for an even bigger and more destructive intervention in Iran.
"The 'Winter of Muslim Discontent' covers an arc from Pakistan and Afghanistan in South Asia, through the Gulf region and the Middle East to North Africa. Despite being in the throes of the worst economic crises to hit the West since the 30s, the Western imperialist regimes have squeezed their peoples and mobilized personnel, arms and money to engage in simultaneous wars in five regions and two continents, aimed at overthrowing political adversaries and installing clients, even at the cost of destroying whole economies and uprooting millions.
"Let us begin with Egypt, where the Arab Spring has become a case study in the making of the New Imperial Order in the Muslim world. To attribute the mass violent rebellions across two continents and two dozen Muslim countries to a US-made film which desecrates the Prophet Muhammad is the height of superficiality. At most the film was the trigger that set off deeply-rooted hostilities resulting from two decades of US-led ravaging and destruction of the Muslim world. More particularly, the rage flows from Washington's crude intervention against the promise of the Arab Spring."
Next post in the series: Egypt: The Making of a Client State...
Friday, July 20, 2012
Petras: From Welfare to Police State
Central to any real understanding of what's going on in the US today (with inevitable repercussions for the rest of us) is the deep and searching analysis of James Petras. Here's the conclusion to his latest essay The Great Transformation: From the Welfare State to the Imperial Police State. Do yourselves a favour and read the whole thing at petras.lahaine.org. And yes, Israel has a starring role:
"The conversion of a welfare state into a police state is the result of a militarized imperialism abroad and the ascendancy of finance capital at home, as well as the proliferation of security state agencies and related private industries and the strategic role of rightwing Zionists in top positions of the police state apparatus.
"This convergence of international and domestic structural changes took hold during the 1980s and 1990s and accelerated during the first decade of the 21st century. The downgrading of the vast public services of the welfare state was covered up by a massive government propaganda campaign to promote the 'global war on terror' together with a fabricated widespread domestic 'terrorist threat' involving the most hapless of suspects (including oddball Haitian millenarianists entrapped by FBI agents). The supporters and beneficiaries of the welfare state found themselves on the margins of any national debate. The mass media/regime propaganda campaign demanded and secured massive increases in centralized powers of domestic policing, surveillance, provocations, disappearances and arrests. Throughout the past decade, what the welfare state lost in support and funding, the police state gained. The rise of finance capital and the deregulation of the financial system crowded out any public subsidies to promote and sustain the competitiveness of the US manufacturing sector. This has led to a major break in the links between industry, labor and the welfare state. Huge tax write-offs to big business, combined with the growth in expenditures for a non-productive police state bureaucracy and a series of costly overseas wars, has led to unsustainable budget and trade deficits, which then became the pretext for the further savaging of the welfare state.
"Significant political, cultural and ideological shifts have aided the rise of the police state over the welfare state. The success of prominent American Zionists in securing power within key media propaganda mills and obtaining appointments to critical positions in the top echelons of the police state apparatus, judiciary, and imperial state bureaucracy (Treasury and State Department) has put Israel's colonial interests and its police state apparatus at the center of US politics. The US police state has adopted Israeli-style repression targeting US citizens and residents.
"US society is now split into two sectors: the 'winners' linked to the expanding and lucrative finance-security complex embedded in the police state while the 'losers', tied to the manufacturing-welfare sector, are relegated to an increasingly marginalized 'civil society'. The police state purges dissidents who question the 'Israel-First doctrine' of the US security-military apparatus. The finance sector, embedded in its own luxurious 'cocoon' of private services, demands the total gutting of public services directed toward the poor, working and middle classes. The public treasury has been taken over in order to finance bank bailouts, imperial wars and police state agencies while paying the bondholders of US debt.
"Social security is on target to be privatized. Pensions are to be reduced, delayed and self-financed. Food stamps, access to affordable health care and unemployment support will be slashed. The police state cannot pay for glitzy new repressive technologies, greater policing, more intrusive surveillance, arrests and prisons while financing the existing welfare state with its vast education, health and human services and pension benefits.
"In sum, there is no future for social welfare in the US within its powerful financial-imperial-police state system. Both major political parties nurture this system, support serial wars, appeal to the financial elites and debate the size, scope and timing for further cuts in social welfare.
"The American social welfare system was a product of an earlier phase of US capitalism where US global industrial supremacy allowed for both military spending and welfare support, and where US military spending was constrained by the demands of the domestic socio-economic sectors of manufacturing capital and 'labor'. In an earlier phase Zionist influence was based on wealthy individuals and their congressional 'lobby' - they did not occupy key federal policy-making positions setting the agendas for war in the Middle East and a domestic police state.
"Times have changed for the worse: a police state, linked to militarism and perpetual imperial wars in the Middle East has gained ascendancy and now impacts our everyday lives. Underlying both the growth of the police state and the erosion of the welfare state is the rise of an interlocking 'financial-security power elite', held together by a common ideology, unprecedented private wealth and a relentless drive to monopolize the public treasury to the detriment of the vast majority of Americans. A confrontation and full exposure of all the self-serving propaganda which underpins the power elite is an essential first step [to change]. The enormous budgets for imperial wars are the greatest threat to US welfare. The police state erodes real public services and undermines social movements. Finance capital pillages the public treasury, demanding bailouts and subsidies for the banks. Israel Firsters, in key decision-making positions, serve the interests of a foreign police state against the interests of the American people. The state of Israel is the mirror opposite of what we Americans want for ourselves and our children: a free and independent secular republic without colonial settlements, clerical racism, and destructive self-serving militarism.
"Today the fight to restore the advances in citizens' welfare, established through public programs of the recent past, requires that we transform an entire structure of power: true welfare reform requires a revolutionary strategy and, above all, a grass-roots mass movement breaking with the entrenched 'two party' regime tied to the financial-imperial-internal security system."
"The conversion of a welfare state into a police state is the result of a militarized imperialism abroad and the ascendancy of finance capital at home, as well as the proliferation of security state agencies and related private industries and the strategic role of rightwing Zionists in top positions of the police state apparatus.
"This convergence of international and domestic structural changes took hold during the 1980s and 1990s and accelerated during the first decade of the 21st century. The downgrading of the vast public services of the welfare state was covered up by a massive government propaganda campaign to promote the 'global war on terror' together with a fabricated widespread domestic 'terrorist threat' involving the most hapless of suspects (including oddball Haitian millenarianists entrapped by FBI agents). The supporters and beneficiaries of the welfare state found themselves on the margins of any national debate. The mass media/regime propaganda campaign demanded and secured massive increases in centralized powers of domestic policing, surveillance, provocations, disappearances and arrests. Throughout the past decade, what the welfare state lost in support and funding, the police state gained. The rise of finance capital and the deregulation of the financial system crowded out any public subsidies to promote and sustain the competitiveness of the US manufacturing sector. This has led to a major break in the links between industry, labor and the welfare state. Huge tax write-offs to big business, combined with the growth in expenditures for a non-productive police state bureaucracy and a series of costly overseas wars, has led to unsustainable budget and trade deficits, which then became the pretext for the further savaging of the welfare state.
"Significant political, cultural and ideological shifts have aided the rise of the police state over the welfare state. The success of prominent American Zionists in securing power within key media propaganda mills and obtaining appointments to critical positions in the top echelons of the police state apparatus, judiciary, and imperial state bureaucracy (Treasury and State Department) has put Israel's colonial interests and its police state apparatus at the center of US politics. The US police state has adopted Israeli-style repression targeting US citizens and residents.
"US society is now split into two sectors: the 'winners' linked to the expanding and lucrative finance-security complex embedded in the police state while the 'losers', tied to the manufacturing-welfare sector, are relegated to an increasingly marginalized 'civil society'. The police state purges dissidents who question the 'Israel-First doctrine' of the US security-military apparatus. The finance sector, embedded in its own luxurious 'cocoon' of private services, demands the total gutting of public services directed toward the poor, working and middle classes. The public treasury has been taken over in order to finance bank bailouts, imperial wars and police state agencies while paying the bondholders of US debt.
"Social security is on target to be privatized. Pensions are to be reduced, delayed and self-financed. Food stamps, access to affordable health care and unemployment support will be slashed. The police state cannot pay for glitzy new repressive technologies, greater policing, more intrusive surveillance, arrests and prisons while financing the existing welfare state with its vast education, health and human services and pension benefits.
"In sum, there is no future for social welfare in the US within its powerful financial-imperial-police state system. Both major political parties nurture this system, support serial wars, appeal to the financial elites and debate the size, scope and timing for further cuts in social welfare.
"The American social welfare system was a product of an earlier phase of US capitalism where US global industrial supremacy allowed for both military spending and welfare support, and where US military spending was constrained by the demands of the domestic socio-economic sectors of manufacturing capital and 'labor'. In an earlier phase Zionist influence was based on wealthy individuals and their congressional 'lobby' - they did not occupy key federal policy-making positions setting the agendas for war in the Middle East and a domestic police state.
"Times have changed for the worse: a police state, linked to militarism and perpetual imperial wars in the Middle East has gained ascendancy and now impacts our everyday lives. Underlying both the growth of the police state and the erosion of the welfare state is the rise of an interlocking 'financial-security power elite', held together by a common ideology, unprecedented private wealth and a relentless drive to monopolize the public treasury to the detriment of the vast majority of Americans. A confrontation and full exposure of all the self-serving propaganda which underpins the power elite is an essential first step [to change]. The enormous budgets for imperial wars are the greatest threat to US welfare. The police state erodes real public services and undermines social movements. Finance capital pillages the public treasury, demanding bailouts and subsidies for the banks. Israel Firsters, in key decision-making positions, serve the interests of a foreign police state against the interests of the American people. The state of Israel is the mirror opposite of what we Americans want for ourselves and our children: a free and independent secular republic without colonial settlements, clerical racism, and destructive self-serving militarism.
"Today the fight to restore the advances in citizens' welfare, established through public programs of the recent past, requires that we transform an entire structure of power: true welfare reform requires a revolutionary strategy and, above all, a grass-roots mass movement breaking with the entrenched 'two party' regime tied to the financial-imperial-internal security system."
Sunday, April 29, 2012
A World First
From James Petras' latest essay Capitalism in the Second Decade of the 21st Century: From the 'Golden' to the Dark Ages of Capitalism (23/4/12):
New Wars in the Midst of Crises: Zionists Pull the Trigger
"In what is likely a first in world history, a global imperial power, the US, is subject to the dictates and pays tribute (in the form of military and economic aid to the tune of over a hundred billion dollars over the past half century) to a marginal state, Israel, with little significance to the world economy and few allies. Never in past empires has a tiny minority, US Zionists, forcefully acted on behalf of the tributary state and had such a powerful influence in harnessing the imperial state to serve the military interests of a foreign power. Never in history has a prosperous elite, educated in the most prestigious schools and occupying strategic economic, cultural and political positions of power, driven an empire into a series of prolonged colonial wars which prejudice major private institutions (oil industry), drain the public treasury, impoverish the vast majority of taxpayers and consumers of energy in pursuit of the goal of a 'Greater Israel'.
"Finally, never in the history of modern social analysis has the public and blatant display of elite power and political manipulation on behalf of a foreign regime been so deliberately slighted and obfuscated by complicit or intimidated scholars and journalists, another instance of the pervasive power of intimidation of the Zionist power configuration.
"It is precisely this elite exercise of power on behalf of a foreign regime that explains the repeated costly imperial wars against Arab and Islamic countries, even in the midst of a major prolonged economic crisis. Since the Israel Lobby's first and abiding loyalty is to Israel, they have no qualms about deepening the US fiscal deficit based on trillion dollar military expenditures for wars to advance Israeli domination in the Middle East.
"The 52 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations and their 'Israel First' followers in Congress, State, Treasury and the Pentagon have escalated economic sanctions and military preparations for war with Iran despite the loss of a major market for US exports and the sidetracking of scarce economic resources to unproductive military expenditures. As a result of war threats emanating from Washington and Tel Aviv, speculators have pushed up the price of oil by 20% in the first 6 months of 2012, further undercutting any hope of an economic recovery. A US-Israeli attack on Iran will not result in a short localized war. It will result in a regional conflagration, sharply reducing the flow of oil, sending prices skyrocketing and in short order lead to a world depression. Given the extremist Israeli regime's success in securing blind obedience to its war policies from the US Congress and White House with regard to Iraq (2003), Libya (2011) and Lebanon (2006), any doubts about the real possibility of an attack on Iran, with a major catastrophic outcome, can be set aside." (petras.lahaine.org)
New Wars in the Midst of Crises: Zionists Pull the Trigger
"In what is likely a first in world history, a global imperial power, the US, is subject to the dictates and pays tribute (in the form of military and economic aid to the tune of over a hundred billion dollars over the past half century) to a marginal state, Israel, with little significance to the world economy and few allies. Never in past empires has a tiny minority, US Zionists, forcefully acted on behalf of the tributary state and had such a powerful influence in harnessing the imperial state to serve the military interests of a foreign power. Never in history has a prosperous elite, educated in the most prestigious schools and occupying strategic economic, cultural and political positions of power, driven an empire into a series of prolonged colonial wars which prejudice major private institutions (oil industry), drain the public treasury, impoverish the vast majority of taxpayers and consumers of energy in pursuit of the goal of a 'Greater Israel'.
"Finally, never in the history of modern social analysis has the public and blatant display of elite power and political manipulation on behalf of a foreign regime been so deliberately slighted and obfuscated by complicit or intimidated scholars and journalists, another instance of the pervasive power of intimidation of the Zionist power configuration.
"It is precisely this elite exercise of power on behalf of a foreign regime that explains the repeated costly imperial wars against Arab and Islamic countries, even in the midst of a major prolonged economic crisis. Since the Israel Lobby's first and abiding loyalty is to Israel, they have no qualms about deepening the US fiscal deficit based on trillion dollar military expenditures for wars to advance Israeli domination in the Middle East.
"The 52 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations and their 'Israel First' followers in Congress, State, Treasury and the Pentagon have escalated economic sanctions and military preparations for war with Iran despite the loss of a major market for US exports and the sidetracking of scarce economic resources to unproductive military expenditures. As a result of war threats emanating from Washington and Tel Aviv, speculators have pushed up the price of oil by 20% in the first 6 months of 2012, further undercutting any hope of an economic recovery. A US-Israeli attack on Iran will not result in a short localized war. It will result in a regional conflagration, sharply reducing the flow of oil, sending prices skyrocketing and in short order lead to a world depression. Given the extremist Israeli regime's success in securing blind obedience to its war policies from the US Congress and White House with regard to Iraq (2003), Libya (2011) and Lebanon (2006), any doubts about the real possibility of an attack on Iran, with a major catastrophic outcome, can be set aside." (petras.lahaine.org)
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
What War? This War:
This post flows from the previous. No one has a better handle on these matters than US scholar James Petras. Here's the conclusion to his latest essay, US-Israel war on Iran: The myth of limited warfare. Do yourself a favour and read the whole thing at petras.lahaine.org:
"War, especially an Israeli-US war against Iran is indissolubly linked to the asymmetrical US-Israeli relationship, which sidelines and censors any critical US military and political analysis. Because Israel's Zionist power configuration (ZPG) in the US can now harness US military power in support of Israel's drive for regional dominance, Israel's leaders and most of their military feel free to engage in the most outrageous military and destructive adventures, knowing full well that in the first and last instance they can rely on the US to support them with American blood and treasure. But after all of this grotesque servitude to a racist, isolated country, who will rescue the United States? Who will prevent the sinking of its ships in the Gulf and the death and maiming of hundreds of its sailors and thousands of its soldiers? And where will the Israelis and US Zionists be when Iraq is overrun by elite Iranian troops and their Iraqi Shia allies and a generalized uprising occurs in Afghanistan?
"The self-centred Israeli policy-makers overlook the likely collapse of the world oil supply as a result of their planned war against Iran. Do their Zionist agents in the US realize that as a result of dragging the US into Israel's war, that the Iranian nation will be forced to set the Persian Gulf oilfields ablaze?
"How cheap has it become to 'buy a war' in the US? For a mere few million dollars in campaign contributions to corrupt politicians, and through the deliberate penetration of Israel-First agents, academics and politicians into the war-making machinery of the US government, and through the moral cowardice and self-censorship of leading critics, writers and journalists who refuse to name Israel and its agents as the key decision-makers in our country's Mid East policy, we head directly toward a war far beyond any regional military conflagration and toward the collapse of the world economy and the brutal impoverishment of hundreds of millions of people North and South, East and West."
"War, especially an Israeli-US war against Iran is indissolubly linked to the asymmetrical US-Israeli relationship, which sidelines and censors any critical US military and political analysis. Because Israel's Zionist power configuration (ZPG) in the US can now harness US military power in support of Israel's drive for regional dominance, Israel's leaders and most of their military feel free to engage in the most outrageous military and destructive adventures, knowing full well that in the first and last instance they can rely on the US to support them with American blood and treasure. But after all of this grotesque servitude to a racist, isolated country, who will rescue the United States? Who will prevent the sinking of its ships in the Gulf and the death and maiming of hundreds of its sailors and thousands of its soldiers? And where will the Israelis and US Zionists be when Iraq is overrun by elite Iranian troops and their Iraqi Shia allies and a generalized uprising occurs in Afghanistan?
"The self-centred Israeli policy-makers overlook the likely collapse of the world oil supply as a result of their planned war against Iran. Do their Zionist agents in the US realize that as a result of dragging the US into Israel's war, that the Iranian nation will be forced to set the Persian Gulf oilfields ablaze?
"How cheap has it become to 'buy a war' in the US? For a mere few million dollars in campaign contributions to corrupt politicians, and through the deliberate penetration of Israel-First agents, academics and politicians into the war-making machinery of the US government, and through the moral cowardice and self-censorship of leading critics, writers and journalists who refuse to name Israel and its agents as the key decision-makers in our country's Mid East policy, we head directly toward a war far beyond any regional military conflagration and toward the collapse of the world economy and the brutal impoverishment of hundreds of millions of people North and South, East and West."
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