Robert Fisk 56

'I Listen as a Lost People Tell of Their Woes in a Kind of Trance'

These people speak with great and terrifying and justifiable anger

By Robert Fisk

April 21, 2010 "The Independent" - -Outside, there was a tropical storm, all swaying palm trees, bright lightening and thunder like an airstrike.

You could imagine – amid the stale croissants and bland coffee of the "executive" lounge and the frightened local newspapers – that Malaysians grow used to this, the thousand shades of greenery amid the hanging trees, the little Chinese temples and the ancient mosques and the dripping villas wherein once lived the rubber-planters from Godalming and Guildford, men who believed the Japanese could never struggle through this mess and reach Singapore. And so, here in Kuala Lumpur, there was something perverse to my little meeting with the Palestinians of Malaysia – yet more representatives of a lost, occupied Middle Eastern people, washed up on the far side of the earth; the same accents, the same desperation, the same courtesy, the same patience when I unforgivably forgot to offer them tea for almost half an hour.

In Hong Kong, I visited Muslim families and traced the roots of their Yemeni origins, and in Kentucky this week – Lexington, to be precise – I met up again with Terry Anderson, the American hostage held for almost seven years by his Shia Muslim captors in Beirut, "trust-me" Ali featuring once more in our conversations: the kidnapper who always gave Terry hope and never produced it. In a frozen Ottawa, I once picked up a taxi driven by a man who lived next door to my favourite tea-house in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli. Live in the Middle East and it follows you around.

Sometimes, it's a surprise – we Westerners are like this – to find that the people you write about don't take such a romantic view of the world. The old betrayals return. The casual remark knocks you over. "I went to the Palestine Embassy," one of the Palestinian men round the hotel table in hot, greasy Kuala Lumpur tells me casually. "I needed to renew my passport. But I come from Gaza and the ambassador refused. He refuses to renew all passports belonging to Palestinians from Gaza. That is how it is. Even here I must be punished by my own Palestinian government for the fact that Hamas rules Gaza. Because Hamas controls Gaza, I must be an illegal alien in Malaysia. This is my fate. What can we do?" And there are those familiar, beseeching, pathetic – in the literal sense of the word – upturned hands. Talk to Palestinians and they give you the world.

The world of Iraq under Saddam, for example. What a guy! He stood up to the Israelis! He tried to help Palestine! "He was a real man!" one of the younger Palestinians tells me. "He was a hero! There was no president like him!" It was the fate of thousands of Palestinians to wash up in Baghdad, to be housed well by the Great Dictator, to be given jobs and education – until "we" arrived to "liberate" Iraq, when the Iraqis turned on their oh-so-fortunate Palestinian guests and evicted them from their homes and killed some of them and sent them on the road to exile all over again. Even unto Kuala Lumpur.

Ghassan Younis Mahmoud. Born in Baghdad in 1982 (grandfather fled Palestine via Jordan to Baghdad in 1948), government-provided house in the Mahmoudiah district of the Iraqi capital. His father worked in the weapons factory at Salman Pak – guns, pistols, no "weapons of mass destruction" – but dodged orders to join the Iraqi army and fight the Americans. To no avail. "Our district was bombed in the 2003 war," Mahmoud says. "My brother was killed during a gun battle – he wasn't involved, just a passer-by – and then in 2007, the Iraqi militias threatened us, It was the Mahdi Army. They took our house away three years after we bought it." Mahmoud fled the Shia gunmen for Syria, spent 11 months in Aleppo and then flew as a tourist to the one country that didn't ask him for a visa – Malaysia. His original Iraqi passport was a fake but he got a real Palestinian passport through the husband of an aunt in the West Bank. He is a bright man – no supporter of Saddam, as it happens – and in real life should be working as a schoolteacher or a businessman in "Palestine". But he works listlessly in a Lebanese restaurant in Kuala Lumpur. "I want to go to Europe – anywhere, if I have a choice – and my cousins are in Stockholm. Another refugee.

Other men among my guests have darker tales. They fled to Malaysia, then to Thailand, were imprisoned in Bangkok, then shipped to the Philippines and imprisoned again. The problem, these nations discovered, was that the Palestinians couldn't be deported home. They didn't have a home, for some reason. Malaysia does not recognise Israel – Malaysian Christians can travel to Jerusalem only with government permission – and so the authorities in Kuala Lumpur could not negotiate with the men who control "Palestine".

Fawaz Ajjour managed to study business administration in the Philippines, married a Philippine woman – their first son, Ahmed, was born there – but, using an Egyptian travel document, he took his wife to Gaza where she gave birth to their second child. She left Gaza before him but when he tried to follow her, he was held at Manila airport for three weeks, returned to live with his father in Cairo and, when his papers expired, set off for another country which did not require a visa: the Ukraine. He spent 10 years there, sick for much of the time, unable to see his family.

These people speak with great and terrifying and justifiable anger. Hussan Farhan draws me a picture of the Baghdad estate where his family lived. It is the same old story. The family arrived via Basra in 1948, were given a government house in 1979, in the suburb of Baladiah. "After 2003, there were kidnappings, killings, abductions. I went to Syria for eight days, then bought a ticket to Malaysia which let me in as a tourist and now I've gone to the United Nations to ask them to help me." Abbas teaches English at a Libyan school in Kuala Lumpur. "I would be ready to accept Malaysian citizenship if I could. Of course. Otherwise, I have to wait for the UN to help me." The Abbas family, by the way, come from a small village called Izzem, not far from Haifa, in what is today Israel.

It goes on like this, brothers in Norway, friends in Europe, a lost people telling their woes in a kind of trance – refugees get bored with their own life-stories – as the warm rain sluices down the window of the executive lounge and the thunder cracks around the building. Just occasionally, the emotion breaks through so I will end with a remark from Ajjour, speaking from the far side of the earth. "You know something? Mahmoud Abbas, our leader, will do nothing for us. It is better for us to keep the Israeli boots on our heads than to live like this."

©independent.co.uk

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25278.htm

Roman Polanski

Polanski's Ghost Writer
A film review

By Gilad Atzmon

April 21, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- It is somewhat puzzling that director Roman Polanski, who has managed to evade justice for more than three decades, decided to make a film chronicling a disgraced British PM in his attempt to escape the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.

Polanski's latest movie is based on Robert Harris’ bestseller (The Ghost). It tells the story of a ‘fictional’ ex British PM Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan) who though once hugely popular, is now totally despised. Lang is in exile in the USA with his wife Ruth (Olivia Williams). He fears extradition to The Hague Tribunal.

The main protagonist, who leads the film from beginning to end, is a ghostwriter (Ewan McGregor). He is hired by a publisher to write Lang’s biography following the mysterious death of Lang’s previous ghostwriter. The new recruit soon discovers that something with the Langs is not exactly kosher. The Langs, it turns out, were working for the CIA.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_AerBW0EcI

The resemblance between Adam Lang and Tony Blair is more than obvious. Adam Lang is a handsome dark-haired guy, he is athletic, he is charming, he is slick, he is a war criminal but he is also venerable, he flips easily. The film tackles the most devastating chapter in recent history, the transformation of Anglo American liberal democracy into a lethal killing machine, fueled by pathos and righteousness, a chapter British society is not yet mature enough to deal with. Once again, it is artistic, creative minds such as Harris and Polanski who are engaged with questions the Chilcot Inquiry would never dwell upon.

So far, any conventional attempt to outline a rational or logical narrative that would explain the logos behind Tony Blair’s conduct from 2002 onwards, has failed miserably. Blair launched an illegal war based on a fabricated dossier. He took the country into conflict in spite of some serious opposition from within the military, the intelligence, the cabinet, the Labour party, the media and the general public. During this process Blair mounted some severe pressure on intelligence officers and legal experts to approve his lethal agenda. Blair was also clinging to Zionist fund-raisers and supporters within the media. It is far from clear why he did it.

The Blairites offer two explanations that are supposed to suggest a rational motivation behind Blair’s wars. One presents Blair as a devout Christian. However, murdering 1.5 Iraqis in the name of God was not going to work in the 21^st century. Besides, a nation that voted Labour was not necessarily going to be happy to find out that it ended up with a messianic Crusader. The other Blairite explanation refers to ‘moral interventionalism’. This particular ‘spin’ is largely promoted by Zionists and Neocons within the British media and academia. Yet, launching a Zionist war and committing genocide in the name of ‘morality’ is an even more embarrassing excuse than using God. Seemingly, there is no patriotic narrative that would justify Blair’s policies and crimes. Clearly the lack of any sincere political reasoning led to the invention of Adam Lang, a fictional American CIA pawn planted at the heart of British politics.

As much as Lang resembles Blair, one may still notice that Adam Lang lacks some key figures that were associated with the Blair leadership. Adam Lang operates without a Lord Cash Machine or a “Friend of Israel” backer who sorts things out. He also suffers from the absence of a submissive legal expert, someone who may remind us of Lord Green Light. Nor is there a mention of the Wolfowitzes or Perles. Interestingly enough, not a single word about the Zionist Neocon enthusiasts within the British Media is registered in the film. I guess there is a limit to what we can expect from Polanski, a film genius who brought The Pianist to life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itR0-I9idXk

In Polanski’s The Ghost Writer, it is not the Zionists who run the show and drag us into one war after another, it is actually the CIA and Adam’s wife Ruth who set us all up. In Polanski’s cinematic universe Adam Lang is merely a puppet, a charming yet naïve actor from Cambridge University who was recruited by a foreign intelligence agency. Lang himself may fail to understand what he was all about. He is innocent he may even be a victim. In Polanski’s film Adam Lang is almost a tragic figure, a pathetic narcissist exploited by evil forces. This interpretation may help us to understand why Polanski who is currently fighting an extradition order to the United States for a sex assault committed many years ago, chose to make a film about a war criminal ex-world leader on the run. The true story, Polanski may want us to believe, is slightly more complicated than it seems.

This presentation of Adam Lang as a victim is obviously there to break the resemblance with Tony Blair. It leaves Adam Lang, the tragic figure, in safe fictional territory but it leaves us also with an incomplete task. Whether Blair was a CIA agent, subject to blackmail, a devout Christian or a moral interventionalist we still have to make sure that he is delivered in one piece to the Hague to face justice. We owe this to the millions who lost their life in the name of his phony ideology.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25285.htm



Het Joods Slachtofferisme 4

Het slachtofferisme kan zowel het slachtoffer als tegelijkertijd de dader dienen. Een illustrerend voorbeeld daarvan geeft de joods-Canadese tekenares Bernice Eisenstein in Ik was een kind van holocaust overlevers. Ze schrijft hoe haar vader kort na de oorlog in Keulen werd gearresteerd vanwege zwarthandel. Toen hij voor de rechtbank moest verschijnen ontmoette hij voorafgaand aan de zitting op de gang een Duitse rechter die vanwege zijn politieke opvattingen in Auschwitz had gezeten. De twee mannen die elkaar kenden van dit vernietigingskamp 'omhelsden elkaar.' En 'toen mijn vader vertelde waarom hij daar was, gelastte de rechter de andere ambtenaren dat de politie niet langer joden mocht arresteren wegens zwarthandel en dat hij nooit meer een overlevende voor zich in de rechtszaal wilde aantreffen.' De Duitse autoriteiten die voor het merendeel zelf nazi's waren geweest of op zijn minst met de nazi's hadden gecollaboreerd accepteerden deze speciale behandeling vanwege hun eigen schuldgevoel.

In wezen was hier sprake van een rechtsongelijkheid, joden werden niet veroordeeld alleen maar omdat ze joden waren. Dankzij de joodse slachtoffers konden de daders hun geweten reinigen. Joden waren zelfs onmisbaar in dit proces. Israel heeft van dit feit de afgelopen zes decennia in hoge mate geprofiteerd. De Joden in Israel mogen datgene doen wat geen enkele niet-jood waar dan ook ter wereld zou mogen. Op die manier werden de joden door hun voormalige Europese beulen, de collaborateurs en de onverschilligen in feite ontoerekeningsvatbaar verklaard. De enigen die van deze compensatieregeling de dupe werden waren en zijn de Palestijnen, die de rol van vooroorlogse joden kregen toebedeeld. De Palestijnse bevolking betaalde de rekening voor het endemisch christelijk antisemitisme dat onvermijdelijk in de nazi-holocaust eindigde. Het zal niemand verbazen dat vooral de Duitsers en de Nederlanders zo pro-Israel zijn, en waarom de katholieke minister van Buitenlandse Zaken Maxime Verhagen geen gelegenheid onbenut laat om te verklaren dat hij de 'Joodse staat' absoluut voor de volle honderd procent 'een warm hart toedraagt.' Jan Blokkers constatering is juist dat 'na de Tweede Wereldoorlog het jodendom in de christelijke wereld vrijwel heilig [is] verklaard en geen volk dat in die processie zo hard vooroploopt als de Nederlanders.' Vergeet daarbij niet dat meer dan 70 procent van alle joodse Nederlanders werd uitgeroeid, procentueel twee keer zoveel als in Belgie en drie keer zoveel als in Frankrijk! En dat allemaal mede dankzij de voortreffelijke organisatie in het 'tolerante' Nederland, de niet aflatende inzet van gemeente-ambtenaren, de politie, spoorwegen, Westerbork etc. Nog voordat de nazi's hierom hadden verzocht, hadden toegewijde ambtenaren van de linkse gemeente Amsterdam uitgebreide kaarten gemaakt waarop concentraties joden in de hoofdstad duidelijk aangegeven stonden.

Hoe schuldiger de Europeanen waren des te filosemitischer ze werden en hoe schoner hun geweten daardoor leek. Dat allemaal ten koste van de Palestijnen, maar ja die lui waren slechts Arabieren die niet meetelden en die door de heffe des volks in de polder consequent als geitenneukers afgebeeld en betiteld worden. De kleinburgerlijke Europese haat tegen islamieten werd na de val van de Sovjet Unie een welkom alternatief voor de aloude christelijke jodenhaat. En een niet gering aantal getraumatiserde joodse westerlingen spelen dit spel mee, in de hoop en de verwachting dat zolang de ressentimenten op de islamieten worden geprojecteerd zij gespaard blijven. Zolang zij maar kunnen waar maken dat de islamieten voor zowel de joden als voor de christenen een even groot gevaar vormen is er geen vuiltje aan de lucht. Bernice Eisenstein schrijft met een adembenemend inzicht dat haar vader nadat hij op een avond de anecdote met de rechter had verteld zijn dochter 'een kompas had gegeven waarmee ik de weg kon vinden naar de plek waar hij zijn eigen herinneringen wilde laten beginnen.' En dat begin is zijn slachtofferschap. Het tragische alleen is dat ze haar vader daardoor nooit als volwaardig mens kon zien. Hij was het slachtoffer, van begin tot einde. Een slachtoffer dat het recht heeft om datgene te doen wat anderen niet mogen, een eendimensionale figuur, een karikatuur, even karikaturaal als de nazi's de joden maakten. En zo voldeed de vader aan een behoefte. Hetzelfde proces met andere gevolgen zien we in het geval van de 'Joodse staat' die het recht mag schenden omdat het christelijke Westen de joden nu alleen als slachtoffer wil zien. Het is een parasitaire levenshouding, van beide kanten. Een van beiden zal hieraan bezwijken.

Iran 327

Why Iran Won’t Attack Israel

The Jewish state’s substantial Palestinian population — which Israel once sought to expel — serves as a deterrent.

By Yousef Munayyer

April 21, 2010 " Los Angeles Times" -- Palestinians are in Israel today because they managed to survive the depopulation of 1948, the year the Jewish state was founded (Arabs constitute about 20% of Israel's population). Ironically, while Benny Morris' scholarship suggests that the mere existence of these Palestinians in Israel -- and millions more in the occupied territories -- irks him, Israel's substantial Arab population also blows a hole in his argument about the need to deal with the supposed Iranian nuclear threat.

Morris is part of an increasingly vociferous chorus warning of an impending apocalypse for Israel at the hands of a nuclear Iran eager to rid the Middle East of its Jews. Yet Iran's religious leaders have repeatedly stated that such weapons are "un-Islamic" or "forbidden under Islam."

Morris' role in our understanding of the region's history is confounding. Arguably, no one played a more central role in exposing Israel's role in the depopulation of Palestinians from their homeland than Morris. In his seminal work, "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem," Morris, using declassified military documents, exposes the calculated effort by early Israeli leaders to impose a Jewish majority through ethnic cleansing.

Long considered a champion of modern Israeli historians who sought to shed light on the ugly side of Israel's birth, Morris shocked many Israelis and Palestinians alike when he later changed course. To Morris, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians was no longer the problem at the heart of the conflict; in fact, he suggested that the problem was that Israel didn't finish the job in 1948.

Morris said in a 2004 interview "Under some circumstances expulsion is not a war crime. I don't think that the expulsions of 1948 were war crimes. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. You have to dirty your hands."

Morris added later in the interview that if Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, "was already engaged in expulsion, maybe he should have done a complete job. ... If he had carried out a full expulsion — rather than a partial one — he would have stabilized the state of Israel for generations."

Yet the pesky Palestinian minority Morris wishes had been expelled decades ago serves as a deterrent from a nuclear-armed Iran, should the Islamic Republic ever build nuclear weapons and consider using them on Israel. The fact that Arab Israelis were among the casualties of the 2006 war with Hezbollah speaks to the reality that no nuclear attack on Israel could happen without the deaths of countless Palestinians and Israelis, not to mention the likely destruction of Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam.

The reality of Palestinian casualties, the destruction of Jerusalem, the onset of regional war and the immediate destruction of Iran's regime as a result of a multilateral conventional or even nuclear counterattack all serve as a credible deterrent to a nuclear Iran. The Iranian leadership has shown a demonstrable interest in self-preservation

The alarmism espoused Morris and company isn't grounded in reality. Rather — just as with Iraq, Syria and now Iran — Israel constantly needs an enemy that it says threatens its existence. Otherwise the Jewish state would have a harder time maintaining its overwhelming military supremacy in the region and continuously changing the subject from resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to practically anything else.

The ideology at the foundation of the state of Israel and the very justification for its existence requires the existence of apocalyptic anti-Semitic forces with the intent and capability to annihilate. Without these boogeymen, whether it is Saddam Hussein, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Arabs who "want to push Israel into the sea," the state of Israel ceases to have any justification for the maintenance of a Jewish majority by force or for its ongoing occupation of Palestinian lands.

The fact that Benjamin Netanyahu, the pro-colonization Israeli prime minister, has made every effort to connect the idea of a nuclear Iran to the Holocaust is evidence of this scare-mongering. Iran, like Iraq in 2003, is an inflated but necessary fear for Israel. No credible analysis of the situation envisions a scenario in which Iran would use nuclear weapons against the Jewish state. But proponents of Israel's colonial enterprise, who support maintaining a Jewish majority by the force of walls and soldiers in occupied territory, want everyone to believe that the focus should be on Iran, not on the occupation, and that Israel's security policies are justifiable against "existential threats."

The need for these inflated threats has increased in the years since Israel signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. Despite these agreements, Israel still maintains and furthers its occupation of Palestinian lands through blockade and settlement expansion.

The emperor may be naked in Tel Aviv, but he can continue avoiding attention and shame if he persuades the world to look in Tehran's direction instead.

Yousef Munayyer is executive director of the Palestine Center.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25282.htm

Iran 326

Wat de Nederlandse media verzwijgen:

More Hype About Iran?

By Stephen M. Walt

April 21, 2010 " Foreign Policy" -- Back when I started writing this blog, I warned that the idea of preventive war against Iran wasn't going to go away just because Barack Obama was president. The topic got another little burst of oxygen over the past few days, in response to what seems to have been an over-hyped memorandum from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and some remarks by the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, following a speech at Columbia University. In particular, Mullen noted that military action against Iran could "go a long way" toward delaying Iran's acquisition of a weapons capability, though he also noted this could only be a "last resort" and made it clear it was not an option he favored.

One of the more remarkable features about the endless drumbeat of alarm about Iran is that it pays virtually no attention to Iran's actual capabilities, and rests on all sorts of worst case assumptions about Iranian behavior. Consider the following facts, most of them courtesy of the 2010 edition of The Military Balance, published annually by the prestigious International Institute for Strategic Studies in London:

GDP: United States -- 13.8 trillion
Iran --$ 359 billion (U.S. GDP is roughly 38 times greater than Iran's)

Defense spending (2008):
U.S. -- $692 billion
Iran -- $9.6 billion (U.S. defense budget is over 70 times larger than Iran)

Military personnel:
U.S.--1,580,255 active; 864,547 reserves (very well trained)
Iran-- 525,000 active; 350,000 reserves (poorly trained)

Combat aircraft:
U.S. -- 4,090 (includes USAF, USN, USMC and reserves)
Iran -- 312 (serviceability questionable)

Main battle tanks:
U.S. -- 6,251 (Army + Marine Corps)
Iran -- 1,613 (serviceability questionable)

Navy:
U.S. -- 11 aircraft carriers, 99 principal surface combatants, 71 submarines, 160 patrol boats, plus large auxiliary fleet
Iran -- 6 principal surface combatants, 10 submarines, 146 patrol boats

Nuclear weapons:
U.S. -- 2,702 deployed, >6,000 in reserve
Iran -- Zero

One might add that Iran hasn't invaded anyone since the Islamic revolution, although it has supported a number of terrorist organizations and engaged in various forms of covert action. The United States has also backed terrorist groups and conducted covert ops during this same period, and attacked a number of other countries, including Panama, Grenada, Serbia, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq (twice), and Afghanistan.

By any objective measure, therefore, Iran isn't even on the same page with the United States in terms of latent power, deployed capabilities, or the willingness to use them. Indeed, Iran is significantly weaker than Israel, which has roughly the same toal of regular plus reserve military personnel and vastly superior training. Israel also has more numerous and modern armored and air capabilities and a sizeable nuclear weapons stockpile of its own. Iran has no powerful allies, scant power-projection capability, and little ideological appeal. Despite what some alarmists think, Iran is not the reincarnation of Nazi Germany and not about to unleash some new Holocaust against anyone.

The more one thinks about it, the odder our obsession with Iran appears. It's a pretty unloveable regime, to be sure, but given Iran's actual capabilities, why do U.S. leaders devote so much time and effort trying to corral support for more economic sanctions (which aren't going to work) or devising strategies to "contain" an Iran that shows no sign of being able to expand in any meaningful way? Even the danger that a future Iranian bomb might set off some sort of regional arms race seems exaggerated, according to an unpublished dissertation by Philipp Bleek of Georgetown University. Bleek's thesis examines the history of nuclear acquisition since 1945 and finds little evidence for so-called "reactive proliferation." If he's right, it suggests that Iran's neighbors might not follow suit even if Iran did "go nuclear" at some point in the future).

Obviously, simple bean counts like the one presented above do not tell you everything about the two countries, or the political challenges that Iran might pose to its neighbors. Iran has engaged in a number of actions that are cause for concern (such as its support for Hezbollah in Lebanon), and it has some capacity to influence events in Iraq and Afghanistan. Moreover, as we have learned in both of these countries, objectively weaker adversaries can still mount serious counterinsurgency operations against a foreign occupier. And if attacked, Iran does have various retaliatory options that we would find unpleasant, such as attacking shipping in the Persian Gulf. So Iran's present weakness does not imply that the United States can go ahead and bomb it with impunity.

What it does mean is that we ought to keep this relatively minor "threat" in perspective, and not allow the usual threat-inflators to stampede us into another unnecessary war. My impression is that Admiral Mullen and SecDef Gates understand this. I hope I'm right. But I'm still puzzled as to why the Obama administration hasn't tried the one strategy that might actually get somewhere: take the threat of force off the table, tell Tehran that we are willing to talk seriously about the issues that bother them (as well as the items that bother us), and try to cut a deal whereby Iran ratifies and implements the NPT Additional Protocol and is then permitted to enrich uranium for legitimate purposes (but not to weapons-grade levels). It might not work, of course, but neither will our present course of action or the "last resort" that Mullen referred to last weekend.

Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25279.htm

The Empire 553

American Kleptocracy
How Fears of Socialism and Fascism Hide Naked Theft
by William Astore at 4:00pm, April 20,
2010

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175235/tomgram%3A_william_astore%2C_the_
business_of_america_is_kleptocracy__/#more

Kleptocracy -- now, there’s a word I was taught to associate with
corrupt and exploitative governments that steal ruthlessly and relentlessly
from the people. It’s a word, in fact, that’s usually applied to
flawed or failed governments in Africa, Latin America, or the nether
regions of Asia. Such governments are typically led by autocratic strong
men who shower themselves and their cronies with all the fruits of
extracted wealth, whether stolen from the people or squeezed from their
country’s natural resources. It’s not a word you’re likely to see
associated with a mature republic like the United States led by
disinterested public servants and regulated by more-or-less transparent
principles and processes.

In fact, when Americans today wish to critique or condemn their
government, the typical epithets used are “socialism” or “fascism.”
When my conservative friends are upset, they send me emails with links to
material about “ObamaCare” and the like. These generally warn of a
future socialist takeover of the private realm by an intrusive,
power-hungry government. When my progressive friends are upset, they send
me emails with links pointing to an incipient fascist takeover of our
public and private realms, led by that same intrusive, power-hungry
government (and, I admit it, I’m hardly innocent when it comes to such
“what if” scenarios).

What if, however, instead of looking at where our government might be
headed, we took a closer look at where we are -- at the power-brokers who
run or influence our government, at those who are profiting and prospering
from it? These are, after all, the “winners” in our American world in
terms of the power they wield and the wealth they acquire. And shouldn’t
we be looking as well at those Americans who are losing -- their jobs,
their money, their homes, their healthcare, their access to a better way of
life -- and asking why?

If we were to take an honest look at America’s blasted landscape of
“losers” and the far shinier, spiffier world of “winners,” we’d
have to admit that it wasn’t signs of onrushing socialism or fascism that
stood out, but of staggeringly self-aggrandizing greed and theft right in
the here and now. We’d notice our public coffers being emptied to
benefit major corporations and financial institutions working in close
alliance with, and passing on remarkable sums of money to, the
representatives of “the people.” We’d see, in a word, kleptocracy on
a scale to dazzle. We would suddenly see an almost magical disappearing
act being performed, largely without comment, right before our eyes.

Of Red Herrings and Missing Pallets of Money

Think of socialism and fascism as the red herrings of this moment or,
if you’re an old time movie fan, as Hitchcockian MacGuffins -- in other
words, riveting distractions. Conservatives and tea partiers fear invasive
government regulation and excessive taxation, while railing against
government takeovers -- even as corporate lobbyists write our public
healthcare bills to favor private interests. Similarly, progressives rail
against an emergent proto-fascist corps of private guns-for-hire,
warrantless wiretapping, and the potential government-approved
assassination of U.S. citizens, all sanctioned by a perpetual, and
apparently open-ended, state of war.

Yet, if this is socialism, why are private health insurers the
government’s go-to guys for healthcare coverage? If this is fascism, why
haven’t the secret police rounded up tea partiers and progressive critics
as well and sent them to the lager or the gulag?

Consider this: America is not now, nor has it often been, a hotbed of
political radicalism. We have no substantial socialist or workers’
party. (Unless you’re deluded, please don’t count the
corporate-friendly “Democrat” party here.) We have no substantial
fascist party. (Unless you’re deluded, please don’t count the
cartoonish “tea partiers” here; these predominantly white, graying, and
fairly affluent Americans seem most worried that the jackbooted thugs will
be coming for them.)

What drives America today is, in fact, business -- just as was true in
the days of Calvin Coolidge. But it’s not the fair-minded “free
enterprise” system touted in those freshly revised Texas guidelines for
American history textbooks; rather, it’s a rigged system of crony
capitalism that increasingly ends in what, if we were looking at some other
country, we would recognize as an unabashed kleptocracy.

Recall, if you care to, those pallets stacked with hundreds of millions
of dollars that the Bush administration sent to Iraq and which,
Houdini-like, simply disappeared. Think of the ever-rising cost of our
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, now in excess of a trillion dollars, and just
whose pockets are full, thanks to them.

If you want to know the true state of our government and where it’s
heading, follow the money (if you can) and remain vigilant: our
kleptocratic Houdinis are hard at work, seeking to make yet more money
vanish from your pockets -- and reappear in theirs.

From Each According to His Gullibility -- To Each According to His
Greed

Never has the old adage my father used to repeat to me -- “the rich
get richer and the poor poorer” -- seemed fresher or truer. If you want
confirmation of just where we are today, for instance, consider this
passage from a recent piece by Tony Judt:

In 2005, 21.2 percent of U.S. national income accrued to just 1 percent
of earners. Contrast 1968, when the CEO of General Motors took home, in
pay and benefits, about sixty-six times the amount paid to a typical GM
worker. Today the CEO of Wal-Mart earns nine hundred times the wages of
his average employee. Indeed, the wealth of the Wal-Mart founder’s
family in 2005 was estimated at about the same ($90 billion) as that of the
bottom 40 percent of the U.S. population: 120 million people.

Wealth concentration is only one aspect of our increasingly
kleptocratic system. War profiteering by corporations (however well
disguised as heartfelt support for our heroic warfighters) is another.
Meanwhile, retired senior military officers typically line up to cash in on
the kleptocratic equivalent of welfare, peddling their “expertise” in
return for impressive corporate and Pentagon payouts that supplement their
six-figure pensions. Even that putative champion of the Carhartt-wearing
common folk, Sarah Palin, pocketed a cool $12 million last year without
putting the slightest dent in her populist bona fides.

Based on such stories, now legion, perhaps we should rewrite George
Orwell’s famous tagline from Animal Farm as: All animals are equal, but a
few are so much more equal than others.

And who are those “more equal” citizens? Certainly, major
corporations, which now enjoy a kind of political citizenship and the
largesse of a federal government eager to rescue them from their financial
mistakes, especially when they’re judged “too big to fail.” In
raiding the U.S. Treasury, big banks and investment firms, shamelessly
ready to jack up executive pay and bonuses even after accepting billions in
taxpayer-funded bailouts, arguably outgun militarized multinationals in the
conquest of the public realm and the extraction of our wealth for their
benefit.

Such kleptocratic outfits are, of course, abetted by thousands of
lobbyists and by politicians who thrive off corporate campaign
contributions. Indeed, many of our more prominent public servants have
proved expert at spinning through the revolving door into the private
sector. Even ex-politicians who prefer to be seen as sympathetic to the
little guy like former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt eagerly cash in.

I’m Shocked, Shocked, to Find Profiteering Going on Here

An old Roman maxim enjoins us to “let justice be done, though the
heavens fall.” Within our kleptocracy, the prevailing attitude is an
insouciant “We’ll get ours, though the heavens fall.” This mindset
marks the decline of our polity. A spirit of shared sacrifice, dismissed
as hopelessly naïve, has been replaced by a form of tribalized
privatization in which insiders find ways to profit no matter what.

Is it any surprise then that, in seeking to export our form of
government to Iraq and Afghanistan, we’ve produced not two model
democracies, but two emerging kleptocracies, fueled respectively by oil and
opium?

When we confront corruption in Iraq or Afghanistan, are we not like the
police chief in the classic movie Casablanca who is shocked, shocked to
find gambling going on at Rick’s Café, even as he accepts his winnings?

Why then do we bother to feign shock when Iraqi and Afghan elites, a
tiny minority, seek to enrich themselves at the expense of the majority?

Shouldn’t we be flattered? Imitation, after all, is the sincerest
form of flattery. Isn’t it?

William J. Astore is a TomDispatch regular; he teaches History at the
Pennsylvania College of Technology and served in the Air Force for 20
years, retiring as a lieutenant colonel.

The Empire 552

Why the US Fears a Nuclear Armed Iran

Wednesday 21 April 2010

by: Michael Gass, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

(Illustration: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t)

A report[1] prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on June 30, 1947, stated: "A peace enforced through fear is a poor substitute for a peace maintained through international cooperation based upon agreement and understanding. But until such a peace is brought about, this nation can hope only that an effective deterrent to global war will be a universal fear of the atomic bomb as the ultimate horror in war." We can see even at that time that nuclear weapons were seen as the ultimate deterrent to any nation's aggression. If Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons, the United States would not have invaded the country in 2003. In his own words[2], Saddam Hussein stated that he allowed the world to believe he had WMD so he wouldn't appear weak to Iran. He further stated, "By God, if I had such weapons, I would have used them in the fight against the US."

In his recent summit address, President Obama stated that nuclear terrorism is "the single biggest threat to US security, both short-term, medium-term and long-term." While the threat may be real, the reality of a terrorist organization gaining access to a nuclear weapon is improbable at best. To date, there are nine known countries that have nuclear arsenals, with the United States maintaining nuclear weapon share agreements with an additional five countries. Of these countries, only North Korea is openly hostile towards the United States and Pakistan is the only country where a change in regime could conceivably put its nuclear arsenal into the hands of anti-American Islamists. Neither country has let even one nuclear weapon out of its direct control. Thus, all eyes are now turning towards Iran.

As I stated previously [3], it became official US foreign policy in 1980 under President Carter to use military force if necessary to secure access to Middle East oil. With the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iran is the only country in the Middle East with proven oil reserves [4] that remains outside of US control or isn't friendly to US oil interests. Were Iran to develop a nuclear weapon, it would gain the means to prevent any use of military force by the United States for any reason, much less to secure access its oil reserves. There is little doubt that Iran will turn its nuclear program into a nuclear weapon for this very reason. And, frankly, there is little that the Obama administration can do to stop it.

Iran has been under sanctions from the US for decades that have only fueled anti-American sentiment. The US forced Iran to accept additional International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) protocols for nuclear inspections and all IAEA inspections state that Iran MAY be looking to build a weapon. There is no evidence of such, only speculation. Given the recent history of epic failure in the US invasion of Iraq, where the justifications given for invading Iraq were stockpiles of WMD, links to terrorist organizations and the fear of Saddam Hussein putting WMD into the hands of terrorists, presenting the same argument against Iran has been met with skepticism. The fact that Russia and China have already engaged in joint military exercises since our invasion of Iraq should give the US government pause. The US can ill afford at this time to start a military conflict with Iran in which Russia and China have the capability of becoming involved.

Even if, or more likely when, Iran gains a nuclear weapon, there is little chance of it letting one slip into the hands of a terrorist organization. Terrorist organizations are renowned for being friendly one day and your enemy the next. The US government learned this lesson when it supported Osama Bin Laden in his opposition to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan only to see his organization turn on the US during the Gulf War in 1992. Furthermore, with so few countries having nuclear arsenals, it isn't very hard to determine which country provided a terrorist organization with a nuclear weapon. If Pakistan, which has had nuclear weapons since the 1980's, has kept nuclear weapons from Islamist terrorist groups, there is little doubt the Iranian government could do the same. The next concern, that terrorist groups will obtain weapons grade material and thus be able to build a nuclear bomb, is very much a concern. However, what is very unlikely is that Iran would be the source of the material. If we take as a given that Iran will try to build nuclear weapons, it will need all the material it has to build its own weapons.

The United States reached its peak oil production in the 1970's. There are simply no large oil field reserves left in the US that are able to meet a fraction of our country's need. The Guardian newspaper[5] reported on April 11, 2010, "The US military has warned that surplus oil production capacity could disappear within two years and there could be serious shortages by 2015 with a significant economic and political impact." What is even more troubling about this report is where it states: "The US military says its views cannot be taken as US government policy but admits they are meant to provide the Joint Forces with "an intellectual foundation upon which we will construct the concept to guide our future force developments." This report only further bolsters the fact that US military force deployment and action are being specifically driven by US oil concerns.

There is no doubt that in order for the United States to withstand the inevitable loss of oil as its primary source for energy it must look to alternate energy models. The problem with this assessment isn't a matter of what energy model, but, how long it will take the United States to bring online a viable alternative that can fully sustain the nation needs. Already electric cars are being looked at as an alternative, but, it will take another decade or more of research before they become a sustainable means of transportation. The public has to have the monetary ability to purchase such vehicles, something that with high unemployment and wages stagnant, there is little chance of average people being able to afford them. The next primary concern is the replacement of government vehicles: police cars, school buses, mass transit buses, ambulances, fire department trucks, etc. You simply cannot replace these vehicles en masse with the ability to keep them running 24/7 in some cases in a few years. This will take decades. In the meantime, securing access to as much oil as possible will be the primary objective of the US government.

If indeed, as the US military states, the supply of oil could start to dwindle as rapidly as it claims, actions taken by the Bush administration come clearly into focus: the stocking of the administration with ties to oil companies, Dick Cheney's secret energy meetings in 2000, the attempted coup of Hugo Chavez in 2002, the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the torture of detainees both prior to the invasion of Iraq and afterwards that sought to provide statements justifying the claim that Iraq had ties to al-Qaeda, and the constant search for a casus belli to strike Iran. The question has to become at this point just how much time do we really have? The answer to that question couldn't have come from a more unlikely source: Dick Cheney. In his interview with the Washington Times[6], Cheney claimed that George W. Bush's popularity and place in history would increase in the next 20 to 30 years. While this seemed like an arbitrary number at first, there is data from the International Energy Agency (IEA) to support the 20 to 30 years claim made by Cheney. The graph cited in this article[7] by the IEA shows a 43 percent decline in oil production worldwide by 2028.

It is this decline in oil production that could bring Russia and China into any attack on Iran by the US military. China increased its demand for oil by 28 percent in the past year alone. China is the third-largest importer of oil and Iran is a major supplier[8] of China's oil needs. While Russia only uses 19 percent of its oil production domestically, it is a major exporter of oil to Europe and Asia. Any attack on Iran that threatens its oil export capability will directly affect China. It is China that has consistently blocked action against Iran in the United Nations and called for talks between the US and Iran regarding its nuclear program. Were China to enter a conflict between Iran and the US, there is little doubt that Russia would ally itself with China.

Simply changing regimes in Iran will not change the situation as it did in 1953, as the ruling Mullahs of Iran are the real power in the country and they seem to agree with Iran gaining nuclear technology. This means that any attack on Iran, if an operation is to be conducted, must be done before it acquires a nuclear weapon. The National Intelligence Estimate dated November 2007[9] states that Iran may acquire a nuclear weapon by 2015. With the continued Republican calls for attacking Iran militarily, there is no doubt that a Republican president being elected in 2012 would initiate such an attack or condone Israel performing the attack as it has now gained such capability.

The primary fear of the US government in Iran gaining nuclear weapons is not that Iran would use them against Israel, but that the Iranian regime would use them to defend itself against a US invasion just as Saddam Hussein would have done if he had been in possession of such weapons. Once one nuclear weapon is detonated in the region by Iran, the concern becomes one of how the US will retaliate. If the US uses nuclear weapons to retaliate, it will only further contaminate Iran. This means that areas where oil companies would drill for reserves become contaminated. As the fallout spreads beyond the borders of Iran to other nations, world reaction will be swift and decidedly anti-American, or anti-Israel, for initiating the attack on Iran.

Statements[10] just released by Adm. Mike Mullen support this analysis: "It has been worked and it continues to be worked," Mullen added. "If there was an easy answer, we would've picked it off the shelf." There isn't an easy answer for the United States regarding Iran because it is a no-win scenario.

Michael Gass is a former Explosive Ordnance Disposal Specialist and veteran of the Gulf War during operations in Iraq in 1991. He performed numerous VIP protections missions for the US State Department to include presidential protection missions for Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. He graduated from the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy with honors in 1996 and spent six years in law enforcement. He returned to Iraq in 2006 as a US contractor doing ordnance disposal.

[1].http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/documents/pdfs/81.pdf#zoom=100

[2]. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2009/06/24/2009-06-24_former_iraqi_leader_saddam_hussein_feared_iran_more_than_us_secret_fbi_files_sho.html

[3]. http://www.truthout.org/us-foreign-policy-sixty-years-disaster58613

[4]. http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/reserves.html

[5]. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/11/peak-oil-production-supply

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/dec/18/cheney-defends-morality-... ">[6].http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/dec/18/cheney-defends-morality-of-war-on-terror/

[7]. http://petrole.blog.lemonde.fr/2010/03/25/washington-considers-a-decline-of-world-oil-production-as-of-2011/

[8]. http://www.eia.doe.gov/cabs/Iran/Oil.html

[9]. http://www.dni.gov/press_releases/20071203_release.pdf

[10]. http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/04/mullen-please-for-the-love-of-god-dont-attack-iran/#ixzz0lVkp4QD5

http://www.truthout.org/why-us-fears-a-nuclear-armed-iran58756