The Myth of Barak's "generous offer"

From http://www.xymphora.blogspot.com/2003_09_01_xymphora_archive.html

Baruch Kimmerling has written what purports to be a review of a biography of Ehud Barak, but what is really an outstanding summary of the truth behind Barak's 'generous offer' and Sharon's manipulation of the 'roadmap'. It is an outstanding essay, and so I quote more than I normally would:

  1. On Barak's 'generous offer':

    "It should be recalled that the Palestinians, from their perspective, had already made the ultimate concession, and thus were without bargaining chips. In the Oslo agreements, they had recognized Israel’s right to exist in 78 per cent of historical Palestine in the hope that, following the peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan - and on the basis of the Arab interpretation of UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338, which call for withdrawal from territories occupied in 1967 - they might recover the remainder, with minor border adjustments. Yet - although later there was a certain slackening of Israeli demands - talk continued concerning annexation of another 12 per cent or so of the West Bank in order to create three settlement blocs, thus dividing the Palestinian state into separate cantons, with the connexions between them very problematic. The Palestinians called the portions allotted to them bantustans; but the original enclaves created by the Afrikaners for South African blacks were far better endowed than those of Barak's 'generous' proposal."

    and

    "During the course of the talks Barak did indeed agree to be 'flexible' about the Israeli proposals on the various issues, and was close to a territorial concession of over 92 per cent. But each proposal, and each issue, was discussed individually; and it was stressed that, until everything had been agreed upon, nothing was agreed. Thus the Palestinians were made discrete offers in many different areas, mainly out of the certainty that all would be rejected outright regardless, while the Palestinians - or so it was reported at the time - did not make any counter-proposals. Afterward, Barak could group together all the separate instances and claim that he had made an incomparably generous offer to the Palestinians."

    and

    "There were further so-called 'non-talks' and 'non-papers' in Taba where, according to some sources, the parties came closer to agreement than ever before. As far as Barak and Arafat were concerned, however, the game at Camp David was over. From that episode to armed conflict was just a question of time."

     

  2. On the Palestinian response:

    "After seven years of futile talks that had failed to make any significant advance in the Palestinian cause - accompanied by the intensification of the Jewish colonization process in the Occupied Palestinian Territories - the question was not whether but when the anger and violence would erupt, and in what form. The Palestinians were not entirely unaware of the asymmetry in the power relations with Israel, but they changed the paradigm. From an attempt to end the occupation and achieve independence that relied upon diplomatic efforts and depended on the kindness of the Jews and Americans, they moved on to a 'war for independence', fuelled in part by religious emotions; the type of struggle in which the people are prepared to pay a high personal and collective price in order to achieve what they see as a paramount objective."
     

  3. On Sharon's real goal, politicide:

    "Under Sharon, Israel has become a state oriented towards one major goal: the politicide of the Palestinian people. Politicide is a process whose ultimate aim is to destroy a certain people’s prospects - indeed, their very will - for legitimate self-determination and sovereignty over land they consider their homeland. It is, in fact, a reversal of the process suggested by Woodrow Wilson at the end of the First World War and since then accepted as a standard international principle. Politicide includes a mixture of martial, political, social and psychological measures. The most commonly used techniques in this process are expropriation of lands and their colonization; restrictions on spatial mobility (curfews, closures, roadblocks); murder; localized massacres; mass detentions; division, or elimination, of leaders and elite groups; hindrance of regular education and schooling; physical destruction of public institutions and infrastructure, private homes and property; starvation; social and political isolation; re-education; and partial or, if feasible, complete ethnic cleansing, although this may not occur as a single dramatic action. The aim of most of these practices is to make life so unbearable that the greatest possible majority of the rival population, especially its elite and middle classes, will leave the area 'voluntarily'. Typically, all such actions are taken in the name of law and order; a key aim is to achieve the power to define one's own side as the law enforcers, and the other as criminals and terrorists. An alternative goal may be the establishment of a puppet regime - like those of the bantustans - that is completely obedient but provides an illusion of self-determination to the oppressed ethnic or racial community."

    and

    "The hard facts are, however, that a Palestinian people exists, and the possibility of its politicide - or its being ethnically cleansed from the country - without fatal consequences for Israel, is nil. On the other hand, Israel is not only an established presence in the region but also, in local terms, a military, economic and technological superpower. Like many other immigrant-settler societies it was born in sin, on the ruins of another culture that had suffered politicide and partial ethnic cleansing - although the Zionist state did not succeed in annihilating the rival indigenous culture, as many other immigrant-settler societies have done. In 1948 it lacked the power to do so, and the strength of post-colonial sentiment at the time made such actions less internationally acceptable. Unlike the outcome in Algeria, Zambia or South Africa, however, the Palestinians were unable to overthrow their colonizers."
     

  4. On Sharon's use of the 'roadmap':

    "Similarly, it was in the run-up to its invasion of Iraq that the Bush Administration issued its new 'Road Map'. Its goal is to close down all armed resistance to Israel in exchange for the establishment, within temporary borders, of an entity described as a 'Palestinian state' by the end of 2003. This is to be followed by the withdrawal of Israeli forces from pa territories and elections for a new Palestinian Council, leading to negotiations with Israel on a permanent agreement, to be reached by 2005. The so-called 'Quartet' of the US, EU, UN and Russia is supposed to supervise implementation of the plan, which leaves all the matters in dispute - borders, refugees, status of Jerusalem, among others - open. This strategy fits well with Sharon's tactic of buying time to continue his politicide policy - a tactic that rests on the assumption that Palestinian terrorist attacks will continue, drawing forth a correspondingly savage Israeli military response."

    and, most importantly:

    "Being an able map-reader, Sharon has found the new Bush plan very convenient. Speaking in November 2002, he outlined a clear vision of how the conflict should be managed: with the implementation of the Road Map, Israel would be able to create a contiguous area of territory in the West Bank which, through a combination of tunnels and bridges, would allow Palestinians to travel from Jenin to Hebron without passing through any Israeli roadblocks or checkpoints. Israel would undertake measures such as 'creating territorial continuity between Palestinian population centres' - that is, withdrawing from cities such as Jenin, Nablus and Hebron - as long as the Palestinians remain engaged in making a 'sincere and real effort to stop terror'. Then, after the required reforms in the Palestinian Authority had been completed, the next phase of the Bush plan would come into effect: the establishment of a Palestinian state, within 'provisional' borders.

    The intention is obvious. The 'Palestinian state' will be formed by three enclaves around the cities of Jenin, Nablus, and Hebron, lacking territorial contiguity. The plan to connect the enclaves with tunnels and bridges means that a strong Israeli presence will exist in most other areas of the West Bank. To drive the point home, Sharon added:
     

    This Palestinian state will be completely demilitarized. It will be allowed to maintain lightly armed police and internal forces to ensure civil order. Israel will continue to control all movement in and out of the Palestinian state, will command its airspace, and not allow it to form alliances with Israel's enemies.


    Sharon knows very well that it would be virtually impossible for a Palestinian leader to end the conflict in exchange for such limited sovereignty and territory. However, the very mention of the code words 'Palestinian state' - taboo in the right-wing lexicon - endows him with an image of moderation abroad and positions him at the centre of the domestic political spectrum. Such gestures also win him an almost unlimited amount of time to continue his programme of politicide . . . ."

     

  5. On the backasswards Israeli position based on a faulty presumption, namely:

    ". . . the presumption that the root of the violence lies in 'Palestinian terrorism', rather than in Israel's generation-long occupation and illegal colonization of Palestinian lands and its exploitation and harassment of the entire people. Thus the initial Israeli 'condition' states that: 'In the first phase of the plan and as a condition for progress to the second phase, the Palestinians will complete the dismantling of terrorist organizations . . . and their infrastructure, collect all illegal weapons and transfer them to a third party'. Were the document's framers to adopt a more accurate perspective on the historical and political causalities, they would propose the prompt termination of occupation, and withdrawal of Israeli military forces to the pre-1967 borders as the first - and not the last - phase of the process. Under such conditions, it would then make sense to demand that the sovereign Palestinian state cease its resistance against a non-existent occupation and act, gradually but forcefully, against terrorist organizations that might endanger its own authority or stability."

     

  6. On a way to start the solution:

    "A minimal requirement of a realistic peace plan is to give the Palestinians some possibility of achieving one of their major aims: a sovereign state over 22 per cent of historic Palestine. An explicit statement of this goal could create a greater symmetry among the parties and provide incentives for settling all the additional issues such as Jerusalem, refugees, the division of water resources and so on."

I don't think I've ever read anything as sensible on the whole problem and the way it continues due to the crazy logic of the Israeli position. One of the great mysteries of the problem is how the Israelis have managed to convince the Americans that it makes sense to set up the negotiations as a series of insurmountable hurdles for the Palestinians. Only after they get over the hurdles are the Palestinians promised some fraction of a state. The Palestinians see the absurdity of this, react violently, and this violence is used to errect further hurdles. Somehow doing more and more of the same idiocy, which constantly leads to disaster, is supposed to lead closer to peace. The real root-cause problem is that the Israelis are violently occupying the homeland of the Palestinians, and this problem creates the symptom of Palestinian violence. Therefore, the only possible start to a peaceful solution is for the Israeli occupation to stop (i. e., evacuate all the settlements, and get the IDF out of the Occupied Territories). The reason this obvious solution hasn't been tried seems to rest in a combination of the continued American funding for Israel, which allows Israel the luxury of delaying the decision, and a certain bad faith in Israeli society, where the idea still exists that the Palestinians can be conquered, and their land stolen. Until the Americans stop enabling the evil and the Israelis make up their minds to give up 'wishful thinking' and do the only right and possible thing, there will be no peace (failure to do the right thing may lead to some rather unexpected consequences). We now see Bush, immediately after the Americans veto a UN resolution criticizing Israel for threatening to 'remove' Arafat, blaming (or here) the whole Mid-East problem on Arafat without once mentioning the threat by Israel to Arafat or the fact that the hudna was intentionally ended by Sharon with his constant series of useless targeted assassinations. The relentless focusing on Arafat, a tired old man caged in a falling-down compound with no real power to either cause terrorism or stop terrorism, is symptomatic of the utter failure by the Americans and the Israelis to acknowledge where the real problem lies. The Palestinians can do nothing to lead to peace; only the Israelis can.
 

Are `Mega' Bucks Helping Sharon Steal Israeli Elections?
by Scott Thompson and Jeffrey Steinberg  

This article appears in the January 31, 2003 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

 A small group of American and Canadian mega-billionaires, tied to organized crime and right-wing Zionist causes, has joined in the effort to steal the Jan. 28 Israeli elections, on behalf of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who is committed to drowning any Israel-Palestine peace process in a sea of blood. The Mega Group, founded in 1991 by Charles and Edgar Bronfman, Michael Steinhardt, Max Fisher, and several dozen other multi-billionaires, meets secretly twice a year, and, since its founding, has sought to impose its top-down control over the "alphabet soup" of pro-Israel political action committees, self-styled civil rights organizations, and tax-exempt charities. Among the Mega Group's institutional power bases are the World Jewish Congress, the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish American Organizations, and the United Jewish Fund-a recent merger of the major American and Canadian Jewish charities, disbursing annual gross contributions of nearly $3 billion.

 According to one Israeli source, the group has expanded in recent years, and now is made up of over 50 American and Canadian super-rich Zionist activists. The dominant figures in the group-the Bronfman brothers, Steinhardt, and Fisher-all have longstanding personal and family organized-crime pedigrees, tracing back to the Meyer Lansky National Crime Syndicate. The Canada-based Bronfman gang, headed by Edgar and Charles' father Sam, and by Max Fisher, got their start as bootleggers during Prohibition. Fisher was a leader of the Detroit-based Purple Gang, which, in collusion with Moe Dalitz's Cleveland-centered "Jewish Navy," smuggled Bronfman's illegal booze across the Great Lakes from Canada into the Midwest. The Bronfman family motto, which applies to most of the Mega Group, is: "From rags, to rackets, to riches, to respectability."

 Michael Steinhardt, like Edgar and Charles Bronfman, is the son of a Meyer Lansky lieutenant, "Red" Steinhardt, who was the National Crime Syndicate's number-one jewel fence. "Red" Steinhardt was also a partner with Lansky in the Havana casinos prior to Castro's takeover, and was also affiliated with the Genovese organized-crime family. According to Michael Steinhardt's autobiography, it was his father's ill-gotten gains that put him through the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business; and it was syndicate loot that started him on a successful career as a Wall Street speculator and hedge-fund manager.

 For the past 15 years, Steinhardt has been one of Presidential wanna-be Sen. Joseph Lieberman's (D-Conn.) biggest boosters, having founded the neo-conservative Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), and promoted Lieberman as the group's poster boy.

 Steinhardt grabbed headlines in January 2001, when he played a pivotal role in conning President Bill Clinton into granting a Presidential pardon to Russian Mafiya "Godfather" Marc Rich, one of Steinhardt's longtime business partners. Rich was a fugitive from U.S. Justice Department indictments for tax evasion and trading with the enemy (Iran). As EIR reported on Jan. 10, Rich is another source of dirty money flows into the Sharon camp, through his secret Russian Mafiya partner, Grigori Loutchansky, among others.

 Mafiya Damage Control
 In a Jan. 15 interview with a Washington, D.C.-based journalist, Steinhardt boasted about his recent intervention to sabotage the electoral campaign of Israeli Labor Party Chairman Amram Mitzna, which was also intended to control the damage being done by the spreading scandal over the Likud party's ties to organized crime, into which Steinhardt and the whole Mega Group could be swept.

 On Jan. 12, Steinhardt said, he had had a private dinner with Ariel Sharon. While claiming that he does not support either major party in Israel, Steinhardt did insist, that the Jan. 28 elections must produce another "national unity government," along the lines of the coalition that Sharon formed in 2001, in which Labor Party leaders Shimon Peres and Binyamin Ben-Eliezer held the Foreign and Defense portfolios. Their participation with serial war-criminal Sharon, gave him and his right-wing thug allies, 20 months in which they could tear apart the entire Oslo peace process, brutally exterminate much of the Palestinian Authority, and achieve Sharon's ultimate goal: the "ethnic cleansing" to remove all Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza.

 Mitzna has repeatedly stated that he will not join a national unity government with the mobbed-up murderers of Likud, and will press for Israeli authorities to get to the bottom of the Sharon-Likud-Mafiya election theft scandals. Whatever the outcome on Jan. 28, it is widely acknowledged inside Israel, that the scandals have denied Sharon the landslide victory he was hoping for. Mitzna, in rejecting the national unity scheme, is paving the way for a near-term political victory, uncontaminated by compromise with Sharon. The organized-crime/Likud scandal has become too big to bury, and any Sharon government-minus Labor-would likely be short-lived and paralyzed by scandals.

 This is something that the Mega Group-in particular Steinhardt and Rich-cannot tolerate.

Steinhardt and Rich
Steinhardt also admitted to the Washington journalist, that while in Israel, he met with Marc Rich, where they joined in promoting the Mega Group's favorite "charity," Birthright Israel, to which, he acknowledged, Rich is a major donor. Birthright Israel, founded by Steinhardt, and co-chaired by Charles Bronfman, is a U.S.-based charity, with "501(c)3" tax-exempt status, which sends Jewish youths, between 16 and 26, to Israel for indoctrination, to convince them to "make aliya"-i.e., to take up permanent residence.

But a closer look by EIR investigators at Birthright Israel raises some important questions about what the "charity" is actually all about. Among the most disturbing pieces of the picture is its close links to an Israeli-based "charity," the Mikhail Chernoy Foundation, a tax-exempt front, set up by one of the most notorious of the Russian Mafiya figures residing in Israel. The website of the Chernoy Foundation boasts that it is involved in joint projects with Birthright Israel.

Mikhail Chernoy is a major figure in the Russian Mafiya, whose "business" activities have been associated with Benya Stilitz's attempted takeover of Alpha Bank in Russia, and earlier Mafiya moves to corner the Russian aluminum sector, in league with none other than Marc Rich.

Stilitz is particularly close with Russian Mafiya don Grigori Lerner (a.k.a. Zvi Ben-Ari), who is scrutinized in Jeffrey Robinson's The Merger: The Conglomeration of International Organized Crime (New York: The Overlook Press, 2000). According to Robinson, after Lerner spent 18 months in jail in Russia for fraud, following a most unusual extradition from Switzerland, Lerner, in 1995, was permitted by the Israelis to found the Israeli-Russian Finance Co., accused of having been involved in laundering foreign funds.

Robinson reports that Lerner set up a string of shell companies around the globe, including in Panama, the Caribbean, Mauritius, Luxembourg, and Cyprus. Lerner became a major money launderer with the permission of the Israeli government, where there are no laws against money laundering. Lerner is also known to have given the former Israeli Minister of Trade and Industry Natan Sharansky, $100,000; through Sharansky, Lerner made approaches with his largesse to the Likud and other parties.

Mikhail Chernoy's Foundation was created in June 1, 2001, and is seen by Israeli investigators as a public relations ruse. Chernoy claims that it was created after the terrorist bombing of the Dolphinarium Disco in Tel Aviv, to aid the 150 survivors and families of the 20 dead, mostly Russian immigrants. The foundation website boasts that American youths whom Birthright Israel brings to Israel, have met with these bombing victims. One item on the Chernoy Foundation website reported: "The emotional meeting [between the Birthright Israel youths and the Dolphinarium survivors] was moderated by representatives of the Mikhail Chernoy Foundation, which has been assisting Dolphinarium victims from the very first night of the attack. The Foundation financed a book and is producing a movie."

Mikhail Chernoy's brother Lev has been a prime target of the Swiss investigation into the Russian Mafiya since he attempted to take over the Russian aluminum industry-allegedly with the assistance of Marc Rich. Also, according to Robinson, Swiss investigators believe that Lev Chernoy has ties with the Mega-linked "Russian oligarch" Boris Berezovsky, who is accused of siphoning $200 million in hard currency out of Aeroflot accounts and into Switzerland. Both Chernoy and Berezovsky are suspected of involvement with the Bank of New York, which laundered billions of dollars in hard currency and state assets out of the Soviet Union during the early 1990s. According to Robinson, the person behind many of these murky deals was Likud campaign contributor Grigori Loutchansky. A recent international law enforcement probe of the Bank of New York operations has turned up evidence that Marc Rich was a silent partner of Loutchansky's in the Nordex operations, which started out as a KGB money-laundering front in the late 1980s.

According to the book by the late Robert I. Friedman, Red Mafiya: How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 2000), Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet refusenik, head of the Russian emigré party Yisrael B'Aliyah, and a Sharon Cabinet minister, took millions of dollars from Loutchansky. Sharansky then introduced Loutchansky to former Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is now Sharon's Foreign Minister. The Israeli press reported at the time, that Netanyahu took $1.5-5 million from Loutchansky, and the contributions to the Likud are never known to have stopped.

In 1994, new Israeli election laws were passed, making it a crime to accept foreign campaign contributions.

Show Me the Money

With Steinhardt and Rich running around Israel, promoting a pre-election revolt against Labor Party Chairman and lead candidate Mitzna, over his refusal to entertain the idea of a unity government with Sharon-the only thing that would save the Likud thug from a near-term political fall-another question must be asked: Is Birthright Israel, like so many other U.S.-based tax-exempt charities, serving as an illegal siphon into Sharon's and Likud's coffers on the eve of the election?

This is a matter that urgently needs to be taken up by Israeli and American prosecutors. While there is no "smoking gun" document, proving that Birthright Israel is funneling cash into the right wing, a careful review of the fund's U.S. 990 Internal Revenue Service filings poses some disturbing questions. According to the most recent filing available, covering the year 2000, in that year alone, Birthright Israel, with U.S. status as a 501(c)3 tax-exempt charity, took in nearly $50 million in contributions, from an undisclosed number of donors. In the same year, its total expenses-including sending U.S. students to Israel-cost under $5 million, leaving an unaccounted-for balance of $45 million!

The 990 forms also revealed that Birthright Israel, more than any other "charitable" agency, is dominated by the Mega Group's known members. Of the 12 names listed in the IRS filing as board members of Birthright Israel, at least 8 are publicly identified members of the Mega Group (based on a lone published profile of the group, that appeared in the Wall Street Journal in 1998). There is no reason to believe that the other four directors are not members as well, but this has not been confirmed, and most members of the super-secret steering committee are chary about discussing their affiliation, or anything else about Mega.

Who's Who in the Birthright Israel Foundation

The two co-chairmen of Birthright Israel are Mega co-founder and booze baron Charles R. Bronfman and Michael Steinhardt.

Other board members include:

Leonard Abramson, the founder of the health maintenance organization, U.S. Healthcare, which he sold to Aetna Insurance, pocketing $990 million on the deal. One Mega project that Abramson formed-at the Ariel Sharon's suggestion after his 2001 election as Israeli Prime Minister-was a group euphemistically called "Emet" (Hebrew for "Truth"). In a March 13, 2001 dispatch, the Jewish Telegraph Agency reported that Sharon wanted to launch a propaganda campaign to overturn the peace process, and the result was Emet. This black propaganda outfit for a "Greater Israel" has dismayed the Israeli peace lobby, because of its support for hard-line policies, such as those backed by Morton Klein and his Zionist Organization of America. Emet has both sent students to be indoctrinated at Tel Aviv University, and has worked with Birthright Israel International students.

Edgar Bronfman, Sr.. The brother of Charles R. Bronfman is also a member of Mega. Their father, Sam Bronfman, was a leading figure in the "Jewish Navy," which brought high-ticket booze from Canada into the U.S. during Prohibition, before "going legit," by building a second fortune in distilling, among other activities. Edgar Bronfman took over the World Jewish Congress (WJC) following the death of Nahum Goldmann, and transformed the international organization into a political dirty tricks agency, which complemented his personal efforts to prop up the dying Communist regimes of Eastern Europe, especially East Germany. Bronfman's Seagrams Liquor had negotiated lucrative business deals with the Communist Party bosses of East Germany and the Soviet Union. Bronfman had also promoted what syndicated columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak labeled the "grain for Jews" deal between Moscow and Israel, which steered hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jewish emigrés into Israel (including a hefty percentage of Russian Mafiya criminals).

Ronald S. Lauder, heir to the Estée Lauder fortune. Lauder has used his millions to fund right-wing projects in the United States and Israel. According to a feature in the Jan. 29, 1996 issue of Jewish Week, based on a special investigation by reporters from Jewish Week and the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, Lauder had contributed both funds and other support to the Likud, when Netanyahu was running for Prime Minister (see "A Bigger Scandal: Illegal U.S. Funding of Sharon's Likud," EIR, Jan. 24). Among these illicit funding channels, was the Jerusalem-based Shalem Center, which Lauder has various founded, funded, and chaired; another Lauder conduit was the short-lived Israel Research Foundation. Lauder has been associated with Russian oligarch Berezovsky, who is one of the chief middlemen between "Godfather" Marc Rich and the Russian Mafiya dons. The Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, which disburses some $10 million a year, has received sufficient contributions from the family cosmetics fortune to maintain a slush fund of around $20 million.

Marc Rich, remains in Zug, Switzerland, despite his pardon. Rich's ties to the Russian Mafiya pre-date his flight from U.S. law enforcement. It was Rich who sponsored the original Russian Mafiya immigration to Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, shortly after the U.S. Congress passed the Jackson-Vanik Amendment in 1974, linking all U.S.-Soviet trade to Moscow's treatment of Soviet Jewry, including emigration.

Leslie Wexner, another co-founder of Mega with Charles Bronfman. Among his several businesses, the best known is Victoria's Secret lingerie. Wexner is a board member of Lord Conrad Black's Hollinger International, Inc. media empire, which turned Israel's main English-language daily, the Jerusalem Post, into a mouthpiece for Sharon. Through Hollinger, Wexner rubs elbows with former British Prime Minister Lady Margaret Thatcher, Sir Henry Kissinger, and U.S. Defense Policy Board Chairman Richard Perle (a.k.a. "The Prince of Darkness"), who loudly advocates a "Clash of Civilizations."

Gary Winnick is the founder of the telecom firm, Global Crossing, whose Jan. 28, 2002 bankruptcy was the fourth largest in U.S. history, with $12 billion in debt. Before this crash, Winnick, who was described in Fortune magazine as having "spent like a Roman emperor," dumped his own holdings in the firm and ended up with an estimated $250-500 million. According to a Feb. 11, 2002 BBC News wire on Winnick: "Global Crossing's ... main Congress beneficiary, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) asked the Federal Communications Commission to encourage the development of undersea cables"-undersea fiber optic cables was Global Crossing's main asset.

Lew Wasserman is the former head of the Hollywood entertainment conglomerate Music Corporation of America (MCA), one of the Lansky National Crime Syndicate's first forays into the mass entertainment business. Wasserman was closely linked to Chicago-based crime syndicate lawyer Sidney Korshak, who was credited with consolidating the marriage between the mob and Hollywood.

Other Mega-linked Birthright Israel board members include: S. Daniel Abraham, Bonnie Lipton, Marlene Post, Arthur J. Samburg, and Lynn Schusterman.

See no evil, no more
Being pro-American was one thing, but the National Post's Canada-bashing finally went too far, says the paper's former columnist PATRICIA PEARSON

By PATRICIA PEARSON
The Globe and Mail (Canada)
Saturday, April 19, 2003 - Page A19

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20030419/COPEARSON/?query=see+no+evil
 
I suppose it's rare, nowadays, to see journalists quit their jobs to protest their paper's politics. We talk about media oligarchies, about their corporate agendas, their "bias." But we view them as monoliths and don't expect the living souls of which they are comprised to beg to differ. There is the bias of Al-Jazeera, the bias of CNN, the liberal bias of The New York Times.

"Did The New York Times watch the same war as the rest of us?" a hawkish columnist wondered in The Wall Street Journal the other day.

Could she be more specific? The New York Times is a collection of hundreds of individual editors, reporters and commentators, some as conservative as William Safire and others as left-wing as Bob Herbert, some reporting straight from Iraq, while others remain cloistered in film-screening rooms or on their beats.

Were they all watching the war with one, miraculously fused pair of eyes? No. And for the past three years, working as a columnist for the National Post, I saw a different world than my colleagues on the paper's op-ed page. I described the view from where I stood, and if the Post was perceived as "right-wing," then so be it. I, myself, and many wonderful reporters and editors there, were not.

So I did not quit the Post because of its bias. Not exactly. What I want to explain is that I quit because of mine.

It happened gradually, by increments and subtle turns. But being a liberal columnist at the Post grew increasingly unpleasant. A paper that started out as imaginative and vibrantly skeptical began sliding into orthodoxy. A kind of Political Correctness, so excoriated as a disease of the left, began to prevail.

When CanWest, controlled by the Asper family, acquired the paper from Conrad Black, I no longer dared to express sympathy for Palestinians. When my editor, of whom I am fond, revealed a deep suspicion of environmentalism, I self-censored in favour of conviviality. When I mentioned that Canadians were more tolerant of abortion than Americans, I found myself accused by another columnist in the paper of "being more persuaded than the rest of us" by the merits of enforced abortion in China. That, in turn, unleashed a flood of hate mail from the pro-life crowd.

It was vexing, but not intolerable. I simply felt as I imagine a man would in a roomful of radical feminists.

Then came the prelude to the war in Iraq and, with it, a deep unease throughout the world about the massive, rumbling shift in the international order. The White House stamped its foot impatiently while the world thought the implications through, and emotions intensified. At my paper, they exploded.

Debate -- so critical for Canadians at this juncture -- was trounced at the Post by a sort of Shock and Awe campaign against any liberal position, not only from the neo-cons' favourite wit, Mark Steyn -- who treats punditry as a sport and shoots liberals like skeet -- but also from every other editorial writer on the page.

Perhaps 9/11 knocked them off their horse on the way to Damascus. I cannot presume to say. But the paper got religion. What arose from the editorial page, with remarkable intensity, was a neo-conservative vision of America that did not remotely reflect the America that I once lived in, and continue to love and respect. Instead, it was a cultish adoration by Bush people of American power unleashed.

This vision of America blatantly favours the rich, displays a breathtaking indifference to the environment, crushes civil liberties, manipulates patriotism by stoking fear, insults its allies, and meets skeptics with utter contempt.

To see it confused with America per se was actually shocking. When Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia -- an American, I believe, but the Post might wish to check his ID -- stood up on Capitol Hill last month and said, "today, I weep for my country," he was expressing the concern of many. Fascism rising. But, to the Post, such objections to the neo-conservative vision became an unpatriotic heresy to be heaped with scorn.

How astonishing, utterly, to watch a Canadian newspaper presume itself to be more pro-American than the most senior politician in the United States Senate.

At times, the Post's hostility to critics of the war was simply childish. There wasn't a peace movement. There was a "peace" movement, quote unquote. There wasn't a valid argument that UN inspectors be given more time to find Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, or that pre-emptive invasion should be seriously hashed out in light of precedents in international law, or that an alternative to force might be imagined.

All along at the Post, protesters were dismissed as loathsome "peace" activists indulging "an infantile nostalgia for anarchy" whilst "wrapped in the warm fuzz of self-righteousness." In recent days, such people were said to have betrayed "our best friend" America, and should stop "henpecking" U.S. forces to restore order in Iraq, because they really ought to be "too busy eating crow."

Note the lack of grace here, the meanness of spirit, the selective memory and the gloating. Not a day went by this month when I didn't want to write a letter to the editor of my own newspaper.

But even still, that wasn't what prompted me to hand myself a pink slip. What finally provokes a journalist to resign in protest of bias? The answer is when she begins to feel that that bias is doing her nation harm.

Allow this piece to stand as my retort to columnist Diane Francis, who wrote in last Saturday's Post that unlike American patriotism, which is fabulous, "Canadian nationalism is an oxymoron." Really, Ms. Francis? Well, call me a freak of nature, but I am an ardent Canadian nationalist. I love my country, and I am fiercely proud of it.

I cannot sit back and watch this nation attacked, relentlessly and viciously, by a newspaper that would trash so much of what we believe in, from tolerant social values to international law, belittling us for having our beliefs, while turning around and saying that what makes America great is Americans' ardour in defending their beliefs.

I can not be a part of a newspaper that would hector our business community into fearing that Canada is to blame for the deterioration in U.S.-Canada relations, when the Americans themselves concede that the White House has fence-mending to do.

I am in Mexico now. Remember Mexico? That other, vulnerable satellite state that opposed unsanctioned U.S. action? I sit here watching the Mexicans comfortably and elegantly banter about that "loco" George Bush, a man who -- as Carlos Fuentes mused recently in a conservative paper -- was less threatening when he was drunk, and I weep for those of my countrymen who have been made to feel ashamed by the Post.

O Canada, Ms. Francis. The fact that I bugger up the verses at ball games doesn't mean that I don't get the meaning of the song. I sat at the knees of my grandfather as a child, absorbing the love he felt for this country with every exhaled breath, and you cannot -- and will not -- make me betray him in favour of becoming George Bush's "best friend."

Patricia Pearson, an award-winning writer, was a columnist for the National Post until this week. She is the granddaughter of Lester B. Pearson.
The economics behind the Iraqi invasion

by Paul Markham.   Copyright © 2003 Media Monitors Network.   source: http://www.mediamonitors.net/paulmarkham1.html

Discerning the real - unspoken - reasons behind the Bush administration’s rush to war with Iraq has provided hundreds of thousands of reporters, analysts and commentators with hundreds of thousands of hours of employment. Although many different conclusions have been drawn all would have to agree that the stated and constantly shifting aims failed to provide any satisfactory explanation. Oil is, of course, an obvious motivation and it certainly does factor highly in the administration and their corporate paymasters plans. Also the aggressively militant ideology of the Bush neo-conservatives needed, in the words of the Russian Interior Minister, Vyacheslav Pelhve “a small victorious war” to project United States military dominance to the world community. But none of the stated reasons, either individually or collectively can explain the administration’s rush to war at the cost of destroying its longstanding NATO or EU relationships. The reason therefore, must be of greater import than the long term damage this issue has caused.

The ultimate answer is rather obvious when revealed, but knowledge of the underlying cause is generally suppressed and censored, especially in the US. The US government is facing an economic crisis that, for political and ideological reasons, it is unable to resolve without recourse to military action. Because of an ideological adherence to 'free market capitalism' (that truly isn't) and a pathological fear of the whole idea of socialism (or social responsibility) the US is impoverishing the majority of its people in order to further enrich the rich. The gap between rich and poor is growing ever wider and the administration is not helping by giving further tax cuts to the rich. Overall this means domestic consumption declines as average incomes decline. This sets off a spiral whereby US industry cannot find a domestic market for its products, closes its operations or moves offshore, putting people out of work and increasing the economic downturn further. This is what globalization is all about - a desperate search for alternative foreign markets in an effort to replace collapsing domestic markets. However, because the same principle is applied on the weaker economies of the 2nd & 3rd world, it ultimately only accelerates the process.

The economic health of the nation - as indicated by the stock market (which isn't too healthy at the moment) - is a sham. The true indication of the health of the economy is in domestic spending - and that is on the way down.

But this isn't the point about Iraq. I will come back to that.

The issue at stake is the US dollars’ role as the sole acceptable currency for international oil transactions. In 1972, the United States agreed not to oppose OPEC’s control of oil pricing and supply in exchange for an agreement that all oil transactions would be conducted in US dollars. As most countries are net importers of oil, they must maintain foreign currency reserves in US dollars. For other countries, demand for their currency is determined by their domestic economic growth. Over production of currency leads to hyperinflation as the value of the currency is reduced. The hyperinflation experienced by the German Weimar Republic in the 1920’s is a historical case in point. The US, however, prints currency far in excess of domestic economic requirements in the assurance that the surplus will be absorbed by foreign demand. It costs the US Treasury only US$0.035 to print bills of any denomination, but of course, buyers must pay the face value. The difference between the cost of production and the face value represents a direct profit to US Treasury. Effectively, the US economy receives continuous injections of foreign capital in exchange for nothing.

This inflow of foreign capital is critical to the United States as, for the reasons above, the US economy is hollow. On its own, the US cannot attract the necessary capital to support its massive US$6.47 TRILLION national debt.

In October 2000, as a political gesture, Saddam Hussein converted Iraq’s foreign currency reserves from US dollars to Euros and announced all Iraq’s future oil trades will be conducted in Euros. At the time, Iraq made a substantial loss on the conversion, but the continuing improvement of the Euro against the US dollar has recouped that loss and, in fact, made a profit of 25% on the overall transaction. It was a lesson that did not go unobserved internationally. At a recent OPEC meeting the cartel seriously considered trading oil in Euro contracts. There was enormous pressure from the US to prevent this and so the idea was shelved. However, Iraq, Iran, North Korea (all ‘axis of evil nations surprisingly), Venezuela, China and Russia have all recently stated an intention to conduct oil (and other international transactions) in Euros.

Over the past few years support for the UN sanctions regime against Iraq has been waning internationally. The double standards applied to Iraq in comparison to Israel, plus the obvious impact the sanctions had on ordinary civilians, as opposed to the regime had become obvious to everyone, except the US and UK. Even France, once a staunch supporter of sanctions against Iraq broke with the US and UK and began to call for a lifting of sanctions. By 1999, consensus amongst the inspectors indicated they were satisfied that at least 90% of Iraqi WPD capability had been destroyed. However, it was clear to Mr. Hussein that continued participation with the inspection process was only providing the US and UK with technical pretexts to maintain the sanctions. Mr. Hussein announced that the sanctions regime would simply collapse within the next few years of its own accord and that Iraq would no longer co-operate with UNSCOM and UNMOVIC.

US and UK belligerence towards Iraq ensured that all Iraq’s post-sanction oil contracts went to German, French, Russian and Chinese companies. US oil companies were excluded. This dominance of Iraqi oil reserves by ‘foreign’ companies was certainly of concern to US interests, but it also created a frightening prospect, that had nothing to do with oil supply. If the sanctions regime were to end Iraq would be conducting all its oil trade in Euros. Within 5 years that would mean approximately 20% of international oil transactions would be conducted in Euros, driving up the value of the Euro against the US dollar. The net value of the Euro over the unstable and declining dollar would in turn lead to other nations (both importers and producers) to increasingly turn towards the Euro as their international trade currency of choice.

The effect of this would be catastrophic for the US. The loss of inflowing foreign capital would leave the US insolvent - unable to repay the interest on its national debt - but it would also initiate a hyperinflationary spiral as the international money market began dumping hundreds of trillions of US dollars without any market for buyers. As the US dollar is not backed by anything tangible (i.e., gold), its value would plummet as all nations would begin dumping their US dollar foreign reserves in an effort to transfer to a firmer currency. No amount of US Treasury intervention would be sufficient to stem the decline as the US does not have the economic resources to buy back all its circulating currency.#

For this reason, the US and UK could not afford to allow the UN weapons inspection program to succeed. From the outset, the US attempted to sabotage and stymie the unilateral return of inspectors. Once inspectors were in Iraq, the administration constantly undermined their efforts, climaxing in Colin Powell’s desperate ‘light and sound show’ in the Security Council. When it became clear that the US’ former NATO allies were not going to cooperate, NATO, in its current structure became expendable.

By invading Iraq and replacing the regime, the US and UK (which refuses to back the Euro and has linked itself to the US dollar economy) delayed the inevitable decline of the dollar. The US and UK have already begun taking steps to gain control of Iraq’s foreign reserve from the UN, nominally for the purposes of ‘humanitarian relief.’ We can predict one of the first action of the US controlled transitional government will be to convert the reserve to US dollars and to re-impose US dollar primacy on OPEC transactions.

The relief the US will receive from this action, however, will be limited and short lived. Companies like Halliburton and the Carlyle Group, which are close to the administration will profit from the venture, but this must be factored against the huge cost of the war and then the ongoing costs of occupation. By this point, other economic factors will begin to come into play.

Since the Second Palestinian Intifada, consumers in the middle east have been boycotting US business interests in the region. With 15 million protesters on the streets worldwide voicing their opposition to US foreign policy, this boycott is likely to be intensified and extended in response to the occupation of Iraq. Worldwide avoidance of US products and companies will seriously impact US economic recovery.

The uncertainty of war historically drives investors out of the stock market (whose voodoo trading provides the smokescreen to hide US economic weakness) as they seek more stable investments, such as gold. The 1991 Gulf War substantially boosted gold prices, as investors fled the stock market. This has not occurred this time. The reason again lies with the Euro. The Euro has gold backing up to 15% of its face value. The European Central Bank has a policy to purchase gold when it is available. Any increase in the gold price naturally increases the value of the Euro. The US, UK and Japan, who are reliant on maintaining US dollar supremacy, must keep the market oversupplied with gold to ensure gold prices do not rise above approx US$300. This is done by selling off parts of their own strategic reserves and sales of gold futures, which are little more than advance requests to purchase gold that has not been discovered yet. It has been theorized that most of the gold trade between the world’s central banks is in futures. A collapse in the futures market, say in response to a serious economic crisis such as a jump in the price of oil, who send the price of gold skyrocketing. A jump to US$500 an ounce would almost double the value of the Euro and would probably be sufficient to start the migration from dollars to Euros as described above.

Iran is still keen to conduct its oil trade in Euros. This makes sense as the US has a trade embargo against Iran and Europe is Iran’s main trading partner. The self evident benefit of conducting trade in Euros will have the same inevitable effect if not stopped. As an ‘Axis of Evil’ nation, the US administration is likely to attempt to overthrow, attack or destabilize Iran once it has completed the subjugation of Iraq. The US however will have to face much stiffer opposition from the EU, Russia and China before taking any action against Iran (for reasons below).

US belligerence towards ‘old Europe’ and Russia may hasten the inevitable merging of the interests of those two entities, especially if the US cancels pre-existing non-US oil contracts. As Zbigniew Brzezinski noted in his 1997 book "The Grand Chessboard", ‘Russia’s only real geo-strategic option [after its collapse as a superpower] .... is [a closer association with] Europe.’

But Russia is no longer the economic basket case it was under Yeltsin in 1997. President Vladimir Putin has helped manage Russia back into economic stability. The Russian Government has recently announced it will repay all its IMF loans next year, one year early. This has been achieved via the careful management of Russia’s oil exports, which is has begun tailoring to the EU market as a viable alternative to middle east oil.

The EU remains a net oil importer. Russia was the worlds second largest exporter. Combining EU economic strength with Russian oil resources would create a Eurasian superpower against which the US could not compete economically. This threat to US geopolitical and economic interests wasn’t anticipated for another 20 years but US belligerence and diplomatic mismanagement may have substantially accelerated the process.

Already the Bush administration is laying the groundwork for action against Syria. Iran is likely to be next. I would anticipate a much firmer response from Europe and Russia if the US tries to pursue military action a second time. France, Germany and Russia ultimately had to have recognized Iraq was a hopeless case. They made the appropriate diplomatic noises and made their opposition known, but allowed the war to take its course. This won’t happen again. As we speak, Russia, the EU, Iran and China will be busily solidifying their arrangements to ensure their interests in the Middle East are protected. The Russian, French and German leaders were meeting in St Petersburg only this week to discuss post-war Iraq. Clearly their association together smacks of strategic interest. And if US belligerence pushes them into an even closer alliance - even a preferred trading agreement and a mutual defense pact - it will be all over for the American Empire. The US, despite its apparent dominance has become a house of cards because of the policies of a generation of corrupt, self interested corporate criminals.

Paul Markham is a project manager for a bank and a student of Middle East history and international politics. He contributed above article to Media Monitors Network (MMN) from Australia.

End the occupation NOW, for Israel’s sake, for humanity’s sake 

A speech made by Mary Schweitzer, a tireless activist for peace and co-existence, at the weekly Peace Now rally in Jerusalem’s Paris Square, near the Prime Minister's residence, under the slogans: Stop the Destruction of the State of Israel! Stop Occupation! Stop Hatred! 
 

As we continue mourning dead children in Rafah, Tel Aviv, Hebron, Netanya, Jabalea, Haifa, Jenin, Jerusalem, Nablus and throughout both our lands, it seems that pain and suffering are all we have in common. But there is more: our pain and suffering are reflections of our humanity and it is our humanity that Israelis and Palestinians share. 

When I embraced Judaism some 40 years ago, people asked me how I could put anything above the ability to forgive my enemies. I replied that justice and humanity come first, and these are the essence of Judaism. For only through embracing justice and humanity am I able to deal with the unforgivable. 

As a young woman I knew about being a victim and about the dream of a homeland. I understood the right to a homeland, the right to security, the right to freedom of movement and the right to justice and humanity. Understanding these was the primary motivator that brought me, some 20 years ago, to leave the land of my birth and adopt the land of my fathers. I raised three children here. It is their homeland: their mother tongue is not their mother’s tongue. I strove to teach my children the rights and obligations incumbent upon a Jew. I taught them about their historical right to the Land of Israel. 

I taught them about their historical obligation to abide by the commandments of justice and humanity, to recognize that we must seek a State of Israel that embraces justice and democracy -- not an Eretz Israel1 that destroys them. If the Zionist dream lacks the humanity of its Jewish heritage it can only become a nightmare. We cannot have peace and security while denying them to those with whom we share a common homeland. It is no longer possible to deny the role that we, the Jews of Israel, have played in the no-longer-deniable realities of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza - in the occupation of Palestine. As much as I want to shriek "propaganda lies," I know it is true that a progressive banality of evil has become associated with my people. 

I have come to realize that my personal security cannot be gained at the expense of someone else's. The occupation nurtures itself on a false sense of right and might. It de-humanizes its victims and, consequently, its perpetrators as well. If I strip my Palestinian sister of her humanity, I lose everything moral and beautiful and positive in the Jewish and human values I embrace. When personal and cultural histories become a foundation for oppression, when stubborn unwillingness to see the other’s profound despair and rage blind me, I must return to my foundations and ask myself what has gone wrong. 

I see the passion with which Palestinians and Israelis argue over their rights and the wrongs done to them. They are all good people who seek a fair solution, but they lack the conviction that they themselves are the only ones capable of taking the steps necessary to build the better future they so desire. The solution requires compromise; it demands that we reach out honestly and positively to take a chance. It demands that we retain our humanity by preserving that of others. 

I call upon all friends of Israel to recognize that whatever our governments are telling us, the solution can only be found in people meeting and speaking and sharing and risking together, in people refusing to give in to terror and hatred and fear. Those who fan the flames of hatred in the name of a homeland or a dogma are not true leaders. Leaders are those who recognize past errors and increase awareness of our common humanity. Leaders are those who create workable compromises. The task is too big and too important to be left to “leaders”.  

I call upon each of us to do more than we have ever done to speak out, to embrace our humanity and to seek to find the path to our better tomorrow. End the violence and the hatred by refusing to continue to serve them; end the occupation that breeds them. End it NOW, for Israel’s sake, for humanity’s sake.

Deconstructing Dick Cheney
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1035779766711&call_page=TS_Columnists&call_pageid=970599109774&call_pagepath=Columnists

DAVID OLIVE   Mar. 23, 2003.

 In his brief televised address last Monday, George W. Bush offered no rationale for the U.S. attack on Iraq.

The U.S. president left that task to his vice-president, Dick Cheney, described last week by the Wall Street Journal as having "the highest credibility with Bush" among White House war advisers.

For months, Cheney has quietly disparaged the diplomatic manoeuvres on Iraq, counselling Bush to topple Saddam Hussein by force.

Last Sunday, the reclusive Cheney made his first talk-show appearance in seven months to offer perhaps the U.S. administration's fullest justification yet for war in Iraq.

Here are excerpts from Cheney's interview with Tim Russert on Meet The Press:

Cheney: "We have to address the question of where might these terrorists acquire weapons of mass destruction ... and Saddam Hussein becomes a prime suspect.... We know he has a long-standing relationship with various terrorist groups, including the Al Qaeda organization."

Even the most hawkish supporters of war on Iraq acknowledge that the Bush administration has continually failed to establish a substantive link between Saddam and Al Qaeda, which drew most of its funding and its Sept. 11 hijackers from Saudi Arabian sources and sought refuge in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Sudan and Florida, but not Iraq.

There is no evidence Saddam, in his more than 20 years in power, shared his weapons with terrorists.

And International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors can find no evidence of a current Iraqi nuclear program.

Terrorists would most likely tap the huge and poorly guarded nuclear-weapons stockpile of Russia, or equip themselves with nuclear material that an impoverished North Korea, desperate for hard currency, is openly threatening to sell to all comers.

Cheney: "I have argued in the past, and would again, if we had been able to pre-empt the attacks of 9/11, would we have done it? And I think absolutely."

Cheney is suggesting here that the U.S. wishes it could have mounted a pre-emptive strike on a nation behind the Sept. 11 tragedy. But there was no such nation.

As for what the U.S. could have done by way of pre-emption, the U.S. intelligence community failed to do what was expected of it pre-Sept. 11.

Late in the day, Bush was presented in August, 2001, with a U.S. intelligence warning of a Sept. 11-type threat and chose not to act on it.

Earlier in 2001, Cheney short-circuited a congressional effort to bolster anti-terrorism measures.

He chose instead to spearhead an anti-terrorism task force of his own, with the goal of ensuring that the White House, rather than Congress, would get the credit for any reforms that resulted. But the Cheney task force was virtually inactive in the months prior to 9/11.

Cheney: "If you look at the track record of the International Atomic Energy Agency.... They have consistently underestimated or missed what it was Saddam Hussein was doing."

The credibility problem here rests with the Bush administration, not the IAEA. Early this year, the U.S. and Britain gave U.N. inspectors what they described as irrefutable proof that Iraq tried to obtain uranium from Niger, presumably for a nuclear weapon. The documents were almost immediately exposed as forgeries.

Cheney: "Our objective will be ... a government that's preserving the territorial integrity of Iraq and stands up a broadly representative government of the Iraqi people."

It is unlikely the people Cheney has in mind to lead a post-war Iraq would be "broadly representative" of Iraqi civilians.

Cheney and his top aides are pressuring a reluctant U.S. State Department to find a significant governing role in a post-war Iraq for Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi exile whose family ran the country decades ago.

Chalabi is now eager to head a post-war Iraq. The wealthy Chalabi, a golf partner of Cheney since the mid-1990s, was convicted in a Jordanian banking scandal about a decade ago.

Cheney: "We need to be prepared to provide humanitarian assistance, medical care, food, all of those things that are required to have (post-war) Iraq up and running. And we are well-equipped to do that."

Not so, says the head of InterAction, the leading U.S. coalition of non-government overseas relief organizations.

"We don't think the relief and reconstruction needs of the Iraqi people will be adequately met, based on the overly optimistic scenarios we understand the U.S. government is using," InterAction head Mary McClymont told the Wall Street Journal.

Cheney: "That flow of (Iraqi oil revenue), obviously, belongs to the Iraqi people, needs to be put to use by the Iraqi people, and that will be one of our main objectives."

If oil-rich Nigeria, Venezuela, Iran, Sudan, Mexico and Indonesia are any indication, very little oil revenue trickles down to ordinary citizens.

One widely anticipated change in affairs, though: French oil giant Total SA, long active in Iraq, likely will be pushed aside by U.S. and British entrants including ExxonMobil Corp. and Royal Dutch/Shell Group, until now forbidden by their governments from exploiting the world's second-largest oil reserves.

Cheney: "As we go forward and look at the threat of rogue states and terrorists equipped with deadly weapons in the future, the only nation that really has the capability to deal effectively with those threats is the U.S. ... The fact of the matter is for most of the others who are engaged in this debate (at the Security Council), they don't have the capability to do anything about it."

As it happens, Security Council member China has a larger army than the U.S. and Britain combined. All five permanent council members Ñ the U.S., Britain and the anti-Iraq war China, France and Russia, have nuclear capability.

Nuclear weapons are the only proven "weapons of mass destruction" Ñ capable of widespread property destruction and the immediate, certain death of millions of people.

In asserting that other nations are not up to the job, Cheney is in fact claiming a new role for the U.S. as the world's sole "constabulatory" power, a term he and other hawks are using with increasing frequency.

The assumption of this role requires that international bodies, including those of America's own creation (the United Nations, NATO, the Organization of american States, etc.), must be discredited.

Cheney: "In the past, many of our friends in Europe and elsewhere around the world, when they see a state that's sponsored terror, frankly, was willing to look the other way ...."

The U.S. itself has looked the other way when confronted with reports of chronic human-rights violations by countries it supports.

It did so in the 1980s when Saddam was inflicting brutalities on his own people while warring with a U.S. enemy, Iran.

As CEO of the oil-services giant Halliburton Co. in the 1990s, Cheney headed a company in violation of U.S. government bans on the sale of goods to Iraq and other countries deemed by the U.S. State Department to be "rogue nations."

As late as 2000, Halliburton was Iraq's largest supplier of oil-field services, and CEO Cheney was lobbying the U.N. to lift sanctions on Saddam's regime.

Cheney: "After we got hit on 9/11, (the president) enunciated the Bush doctrine that we will hold states that sponsor terror, that provide sanctuary for terrorists, to account.... That's a brand-new departure. We've never done that before. It makes people very uncomfortable, but it's absolutely essential."

Dating from 1903, when the U.S. supported an uprising in the breakaway Colombia state of Panama to facilitate a U.S.-built canal, Washington has sponsored efforts at regime change in Guatemala, Iran, Cuba, South Vietnam, Chile, Afghanistan, Libya, Grenada, Nicaragua, Panama, Somalia, Haiti and Bosnia. This is not a complete list.

Cheney: "The U.S. has established over the last several years ... an unfortunate practice that we've often failed to respond effectively to attacks on the U.S.

We had situations in '83 when the Marine barracks was blown up in Beirut. There was no effective U.S. response.

"In '93, the World Trade Center in New York hit; no effective response. In '96, Khobar Towers.

"In '98, the east Africa embassy bombings. In 2000, the USS Cole was hit.

"And each time there was almost no credible response for the United States to these attacks."

What these incidents have in common is that Iraq had nothing to do with them.

Russert asked what would be next after Iraq. Would the U.S. consider military action to pre-empt the nuclear programs of North Korea or Iran?

Cheney: "I didn't come this morning to announce any new military ventures or, frankly, to take any off the table. We haven't thought in those terms."

In the late 1990s, Cheney, future U.S. defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and several men who now work for them as top advisers began to think very much in those terms.

They signed a founding manifesto of the Project For A New American Century, a conservative Washington think-tank.

The manifesto called for the United States to stop working through the U.N., NATO and other organizations that constrain U.S. power, and to promote regime change around the world.

The director of the Project For A New American Century is William Kristol, who first gained attention as a vice-presidential adviser nicknamed "Dan Quayle's brain."

Kristol, who now edits the Rupert Murdoch-financed Weekly Standard, probably the most influential of America's neo-conservative journals, has said Saddam's ouster is only the beginning.

"We haven't persuaded the Bush administration of everything," Kristol was quoted recently.

"They need to rethink their policy toward Saudi Arabia.... The administration kicked the can down the road on North Korea, but that remains a threat."

They deserve better

Realities of Israeli oppression rarely aired in North America
September 1, 2003   http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/kaufmann.html

By BILL KAUFMANN -- Calgary Sun

Shawn Dombrowski's first task once he'd arrived in the Holy Land was to dissect the Israeli Defence Force's destruction of a Palestinian ambulance.

The Fort McMurray Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) said the Israeli troops knew the vehicle had been given clearance to enter Ramallah, but launched their grenade through its windshield anyway.

"The 40-mm grenade probably went right into the doctor's chest and blew up ... three EMTs had 80% burns over their bodies," he told a Calgary audience last spring.

The more fortunate paramedics are beaten to a pulp by the soldiers, used as human shields by them, kidnapped or delayed for hours from reaching patients, Dombrowski reported.

Palestinians on the streets during curfew, even those seeking medicine or food were shot out of hand, he added.

It's all part of Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine, where kids throwing stones at tanks are gunned down, schools are destroyed, clinics ransacked, homes plundered, tank shells lobbed into marketplaces and missiles hurled into crowds.

After being driven out of what's now Israel in 1948, the Palestinians are now enduring a second, more gradual expulsion in the West Bank -- ethnic cleansing slow enough as to escape undue world -- read American public -- attention.

Despite the "road map" to peace, land continues to be confiscated to build Israeli settlements, which brings the occupation troops and roads for the exclusive use of settlers that dissects Palestinian land, making life barely liveable.

Palestinians avoiding the numerous roadblocks on their own land to go about their daily lives invite a hail of bullets.

While settlers fill their swimming pools, Palestinians go begging for water; the army destroys wells.

Countless orchards nurtured over generations have been wiped out, marketplaces bulldozed, civilian infrastructure everywhere trashed, often for no apparent security reason.

"They just want the Palestinians to give up, leave their ancestral lands and go to Jordan," says Calgarian Sky McLaughlin, an educator in Ramallah.

Since the current intifadeh broke out three years ago, nearly 13,000 Palestinians have been rendered homeless by the IDF, which has made a weapon out of food and withholding other humanitarian aid -- some of the many war crimes it commits.

The IDF is notorious for killing journalists, aid workers and targetting human rights activists. This year, activist Rachel Corrie of Olympia, Wash. was crushed to death by an IDF bulldozer as she defended a Gaza home.

The Israelis called it an accident, that the driver couldn't see the 23-year-old peaceful demonstrator, but photos tell a different story.

In an e-mail from the bombed-out squalor of Rafah camp, Corrie described the lot of a people suffering under the world's fourth most powerful military.

"No amount of reading, attendance at conferences, documentary viewing could have prepared me for the situation here -- you just can't imagine it unless you see it."

In a journey to the area four years ago, I met Israeli occupation soldiers in Hebron and Gaza disgusted with their mission.

Another witness, Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa compares the oppression to the apartheid of earlier experience.

These realities are rarely aired among North Americans and those who do are labelled anti-Semitic. Presumably those Israeli soldiers of conscience are anti-Semites, too.

Now, under cover of the road map, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is building the security fence which meanders further onto Palestinian soil, cutting off farms and villages from the land and water that sustains them.

Sharon is adamant not a single settlement will be vacated -- a recipe for continued conflict -- precisely what he seeks.

Victory in the 1967 war made the long-held dreams of Israeli expansionists a reality, though the price paid for the colonization by both Israelis and Palestinians has been steep.

The terrorist suicide bombings are evil, detestable and should stop immediately; not only do they shatter innocent lives, they imperil the Palestinian cause. Enough is enough.

When the criminal scum who order the bombings are liquidated, it's impossible to summon sympathy for them.

But if your troops act like animals and treat the subjugated like animals, some of them will behave like animals.

And the current road map charade, driven by Israel bullying its feeble foe to accept whatever crumbs it deems fit to toss them, will ensure endless bloodshed.

Palestinians deserve better.

So do Israelis.

 

October 18 / 19, 2003

Death Threats in Berkeley

"Close Your Organization or Die"

By ALISON WEIR   http://counterpunch.org/weir10182003.html

Left on our office voicemail at 2 a.m. on Oct. 3, 2003:

"Hi. I heard your speech today in UC Berkeley; the debate. I'm telling you this right now. On Monday, at 2 PM, you better not be in your office. Because me and my buddies, who were trained in the Israeli Army, will come and kill every single one of you son-of -a-bitches for what you are doing to destroy Israel. So watch out. This is not a joke. On Monday you better watch out. Don't come to work.

And close your organization or you're going to die."

Dear Israel and your frenzied defenders,

No. We're not going to die.

I know you're used to killing people who are in your way. Old people, young people, leaders, followers, mothers, fathers, teachers, doctors, factory workers, farmers.

It hasn't seemed difficult for you. Human beings are immensely vulnerable. When people have no armor, no defending army, no power, all it takes is a few bullets. Skulls are easily penetrable by tempered steel. Rib cages are shattered with ease.

All it requires, really, is sufficient ruthlessness.

From the beginning of your nation you've made it clear that you possess this in abundance. In 1948 you ethnically cleansed the once-multicultural land on which you chose to impose your uni-cultural nation, of hundreds of thousands of human beings who did not fit your national vision of purity.

You call this your nation's "War of Independence."

Please explain this to me. Independence from whom?

From the farmers whose ancestors had tilled that land for centuries?

From the fishermen whose ancestors had fished in the Sea of Galilee and been turned, it is said, into fishers of men?

From the maintainers and harvesters of olive groves planted a millennium ago, orchards now daily uprooted by your cruelly efficient military bulldozers?

Independence from humanity? From morality? >From normality? From everyone else in the world?

And then you killed some more.

You called farmers trying to return to their farms "infiltrators" and killed them. You called the nations who had reluctantly but ineluctably sheltered them "harborers of terrorists" and killed their citizens. You invaded neighbor after neighbor after neighbor. Not a single one escaped your ferocity. Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon.

And you assassinated. How you've assassinated. Your assassins have roved the world with great success - except when you've killed the wrong person here and there. You kill a waiter, mistaking him for a "terrorist," and you don't apologize.

You crush 23-year-old Rachel Corrie "unintentionally," twice, and you don't apologize. You shoot 21-year-old Tom Hurndahl in the back of the head, and you don't apologize. You shoot 26-year-old Brian Avery in the face "by accident," and you don't apologize. You kill Palestinian grandmothers, nine-year-olds, infants, and you don't apologize.

Approximately 85 percent of the people you kill in Palestine are "collateral damage," and you don't apologize.

Have you no manners?

In this country you kill some more. You killed Alex Odeh and Iris Kones, and at least five other Americans.

But that's not all.

You've killed careers. You've killed businesses. You've killed hope. You've weeded out sprigs of integrity from our Congress, journalists of principle from our press.

But no more. Your reign of terror has ended.

There are too many of us. You've called "anti-Semitism" once too often. You've pressured one too many newspapers, one too many universities, one too many mayors. You've made one too many anonymous phone calls, emailed one too many crude messages. Threatened one too many organizations.

It is over. You will continue to win your battles, for awhile. But the war has turned.

We have awakened to the brutality of your injustice, and our numbers are growing. We are of every ethnicity and nationality, including your own citizenry, and we are joining together to uphold the holiness of our common humanity.

We are working to create a world of equality, of brotherhood and sisterhood, of compassion and respect, of laughter and love.

You are few, we are many.

You can't kill us all.

Please join us.

Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing full and accurate information about Israel and Palestine.