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:
- 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."
- 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."
- 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."
- 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 . . . ."
- 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."
- 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
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
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
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 (
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
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
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
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
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 (
Robinson reports that Lerner set up a string of shell
companies around the globe, including in
Mikhail Chernoy's Foundation was created in
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
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
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
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
Who's Who in the Birthright
The two co-chairmen of Birthright
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
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
Ronald S. Lauder,
heir to the Estée Lauder fortune. Lauder has used his millions to fund
right-wing projects in the
Marc Rich,
remains in
Leslie Wexner,
another co-founder of Mega with Charles Bronfman. Among his several businesses,
the best known is
Gary Winnick
is the founder of the telecom firm, Global Crossing, whose
Lew Wasserman
is the former head of the
Other Mega-linked Birthright
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. |
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.
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