I wondered about Anderson’s commitment to anti-interventionism and his view on “humanitarian” interventions, something that should be crystal clear from someone running for president and appealing to progressives. The following email exchange resulted:

From JW to RA:  Hello Rocky,

I wish that you would spell all this out a bit more clearly.

Are you for “humanitarian” interventions as in the Balkans?  Have you read Jean Bricmont’s great (and short) book “Humanitarian Imperialism”?

Are you for getting rid of all our overseas bases and devoting a limited military to purely defensive purposes?

Many pwogs, for example, Amy Goodman and CIA “consultant” Juan Cole, were cheerleaders for the Libyan intervention, despite Libya having had the highest Human Development Index in all of Africa before NATO destroyed its infrastructure and reduced it to rubble in the name of human rights.

We have two versions of imperialism – the “tough guy” Dick Cheney brand and the “humanitarian” Susan Rice version.  Both are the same in reality whatever the words attached to them.  We must break with them both and cease viewing the world solely through the very arbitrary lens of “human rights,” a good sell among the pwogwessives.

But what good are human rights to a starving illiterate woman in India, a category that Mao consigned to the dust heap of history in China?

From RA to JW:  Yes, so long as we are in compliance with the War Power Clause of the Constitution and the U.N. Charter, I favor the U.S. working with the international community in putting to an end massive atrocities.  I strongly believe in living up to the promise of “Never Again.”  Given all my work in this area, I don’t know how you would have any doubt about my position.  I don’t think political boundaries should control our moral obligations to our brothers and sisters elsewhere.

I recommend to you A Problem From Hell, by Samantha Power.

Your reference to Susan Rice was a curious one.  She sat on her hands (as you apparently would have had her do) when she was with the NSC and failed to take any action to stop the genocide that led to the slaughter of 800,000 Rwandans in 100 days.  According to an article in The Atlantic by Samantha Power, Susan Rice was apparently more concerned with the political implications in the mid-term elections in 1994 than she was about the horrendous fate of the Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda. Those who stood by when their action could have ended the atrocities are, in my view, complicit.

From JW to RA: I think the Samantha Powers of the world are a big part of the problem.

I recommend that you read Humanitarian Imperialism by Jean Bricmont.

From RA to JW: I think isolationist nationalists who don’t care about the suffering of other people who happen to be in other parts of the world are “the problem”.  Sorry, John, we’re on completely different moral planets here.

I’ll try to read the book you referenced.  Have you read A Problem From Hell?  It’s heart-breaking — and a real indictment of the failure of the US to do what is required to stop the atrocities.

From JW to RA: I cannot agree, Rocky.  The “international community” is a euphemism for NATO and the US.  The UN foolishly went along with the destruction of Libya – and we can now see that Russia and China are finally drawing a line in the sand at Syria.

You fail to see that the US is the most ruthless Empire in the history of humankind, and it will cover up its atrocities with appeals to “human rights.”  It is the biggest lie of all.   Would you favor military intervention to end apartheid in Israel?  Will you take that position on the campaign trail?

For those of us living in the heart of Empire there is no alternative to being principled anti-interventionists.  The Empire is incapable of waging a “good war,” whatever that may be.  An anti-interventionist is not an “isolationist nationalist.”  That is simply a smear.

Samantha Power has not written a heart rending account of what has been done to Iraq, I notice.

Finally, the Empire has always cloaked its wars in virtue, from the White Man’s burden to “human rights,” and it always will.  The path to hell is paved with naiveté.

From RA to JW: Samantha Power has not written that account of Iraq because we did not intervene on humanitarian grounds.  It was an illegal war of aggression, at odds with the War Power Clause and with the UN Charter.  You paint with a very misleading, broad brush.  You can advocate abandoning people during genocides and other mass atrocities.  I will always be on the other side.  I share your anti-imperialistic views; I do not share your willingness to turn a blind eye to humanitarian disasters.

You will never convince me of what I perceive to be an extremely selfish, heartless isolationist position.  I would always advocate doing what I would want the U.S. and international community to do if I were in the position of a victim of genocide.  To advocate doing what is right is hardly naïve.  And it is hardly countenancing wars of aggression.  No one has a stronger record of opposition to the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq than I.

From JW to RA: You are well meaning as far as I can tell, but you hold very dangerous views IMHO.

If people want to help those in far off lands, let them form their Abraham Lincoln brigades, something the US Empire also opposed.  Of course, that means putting one’s body on the line, not someone else’s body.

First do no harm.

From RA to JW: So you would advocate repeal of the Genocide Convention?  We couldn’t be further apart in our views on this.

But, then, I recognize the concerns with US empire that drive your views on this.  We need to strive to be better on all counts.  That’s why I have worked so hard in all of these areas over the years — and a large part of why I’m doing what I am now.

From JW to RA:  I never said that I wanted to repeal the Genocide Convention.  Why do you conclude that?

But what is being done to the Palestinians is a slow genocide.  Do you advocate military action against Israel to get rid of the Apartheid regime there?  You should be explicit about that.

Noam Chomsky points out that the slaughter in the Balkans, greatly exaggerated, took place AFTER NATO’s bombs started falling.  And that was not really a genocide either.

Nor is Darfur a genocide either – a brutal war on both sides apparently but not a genocide. In fact, only the US and that outrageous liar Susan Rice label it as such.

And then there is the slaughter in Libya a country that once had the highest Human Development Index in all of Africa.  The concrete reality is that the US is always up to no good and will kill and kill to get its way. We should not be in the business of providing cover for that.

I do not think that you really appreciate that the formerly colonized peoples of the world do not want Western interventions.  They have had quite enough of the benefits of such neocolonial acts.

From RA to JW: You are so incredibly wrong.  The people (at least the Tutsis) of Rwanda, and of Kosovo, view the U.S. as heroically coming to their aid and stopping the massacres.  You would have been content with sitting back after the massacre at Srebrenica.  To me, that is the greatest moral cowardice.

And how can you maintain that you would not seek the repeal of the Genocide Convention?  It creates a legal obligation to take action to stop genocides wherever they occur.

I cannot countenance the U.S. continuing to build its empire; neither can I countenance people — or our nation — turning a blind eye to mass atrocities when they can be stopped.

This will be my last email on this topic.  I’m dismayed that any person can be so insensitive toward victims of genocide or other mass atrocities.  (I’m curious.  What have you done, if anything, to help stop wars of aggression or mass atrocities?)

Good luck - 

At this point someone on the list of those cc’d to this exchange jumped in, J.A., an Israeli expat who as a young man was swept into the Yom Kippur war and saw many of his friends needlessly killed. He left Israel in part to save his son from future slaughters of this sort and has vowed never to return. He wrote:

From J.A. to RA and JW:  Rocky, h humanitarian intervention is a slippery slope argument, and is being used for imperialistic ambitions (The latest example is Libya, and still Afghanistan – freeing the Afghan women. If remember well, Samantha Power supported this view) and, in general, being used to justify our military power. (Humanitarian aid via aircraft carriers, being the good policeman of the world, etc).

BTW, you wrote “illegal invasion”; is there a legal invasion?

Here is a question: Since you support “humanitarian” intervention, do you support attacking Israel and freeing the Palestinians from the  Israeli harsh occupation? You must know about the suffering of the Palestinians under the Israeli Apartheid and the stealth genocide by Israel, so should we invade Israel?

(It is a rhetorical question to demonstrate how absurd is the “humanitarian” intervention view).

Joshua

From JW to RA:  You did not answer whether you would advocate in your campaign a military expeditionary force led by the US to end Israeli apartheid and the slow genocide of the Palestinians?  Why can you not answer that?

And will you launch another expedition to restore the Tibetan theocracy?  It will probably take a few million persons under arms and a return to the draft.  Or how about an occupation of India where the most dire poverty continues and the farmers driven from their agriculture by agribusiness commit suicide in huge numbers?  Or is that OK because “democracy” reigns?

And a second point.  The greatest stimulus to nuclear proliferation is the huge conventional military force which the US has.  That is the force that you need to preserve in order to save the world.  The only protection for a small nation is nukes.

Long ago when the US was trying to take down the Chinese revolution and waging a war on Vietnam, Mao Zedong opined that US imperialism is the number one enemy of the peoples of the world.  I am afraid that remains true.

I recommend again that you read Chomsky on the Balkans.

And you are proof positive that the progressive movement, so called, is no longer anti-interventionist or anti-Empire.

As they say, “You’ve come a long way, baby.”

At least you admit it outright – and that amount of honesty deserves credit.  I suggest that you openly proclaim the new humanitarian interventionism as part of your platform.  Now if only other progressives would also do that, we could separate wheat from chaff more readily.

JW

P.S. As a medical student I learned that there are some things that are beyond one’s control and that when one tries to control them the only thing that results is harm — sometimes fatal harm. Using the US imperial military to save the world is like operating with an infected scalpel.

I wrote that last year in two exposés: “The Selling of the WWC”  and “The WWC Desecrates its Namesake’s Legacy.”  They revealed that the Washington, DC-based Wilson Center is violating its Congressional mandate and is up to its neck in tainted corporate cash.

A leading Congressman, a Wilson family descendant, citizens’ groups, and many others agreed. One prominent journalist called the WWC “a global joke.”

Several months ago, this Congressionally created, multi-million dollar think tank, funded partly by taxpayers, made another colossal blunder.  It hired former eight-term Congresswoman Jane Harman (D–CA) to be its president, replacing Lee Hamilton, also a former Congressman.

Harman, like Hamilton, is not only part of the good-old-boy (and girl) network of which the WWC is so fond.   Among her other baggage, charges of illegal conduct in a spy scandal involving AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) have shadowed Harman for years.

Let’s take a closer look at Harman and the Wilson Center to see why they’re the marriage from hell.

Harman’s spy scandal

Two top AIPAC officials, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, were indicted on spy charges in 2005 for passing classified documents to Israel.

Citing confidential sources, Time magazine, in 2006, and Congressional Quarterly, two years ago, reported that the Feds had wiretapped Cong. Jane Harman and a “suspected Israeli agent” agreeing to this deal: Harman would persuade the Justice Department to reduce the charges against Rosen and Weissman; in exchange, AIPAC and its influential supporters would persuade then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to reappoint the unpopular Harman as top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

Harman apparently promised the “Israeli agent” to “waddle into”  the AIPAC scandal “if you think it’ll make a difference.”  Harman ended the exchange with “this conversation doesn’t exist.”

The Justice Department and CIA wanted to prosecute Harman.  But Alberto Gonzales, President Bush’s Attorney General, reportedly refused because – ironically – he “needed Jane” to support the government’s ongoing warrantless wiretapping program.

Shockingly, charges against Rosen and Weissman were dropped  in 2009 because a judge put constraints on Federal prosecutors.  Larry Franklin, the Defense Department official who passed the classified documents to the two AIPAC officials, wasn’t so lucky.   He pled guilty three years earlier and went to prison.

Harman has long denied any wrongdoing.  She has never, however, given a full account of her conversations regarding Rosen and Weissman.  Full accounts, as we shall see, are not one of Harman’s virtues.

Harman’s genocide flip-flop

While co-sponsoring Congressional resolution HR 106 on the Armenian genocide  committed by Turkey, Cong. Harman went behind the backs of her constituents in October of 2007 by asking then-Foreign Relations Chair Tom Lantos (D-CA) to bury the resolution.  Only after her constituents discovered this through other sources did she admit to it.

But the explanations for her flip-flop made little sense. “This is the wrong time” for the resolution, wrote Harman.  But she couldn’t cite anything relevant in 2007 that had changed regarding Turkey, Armenia, or the Middle East since she signed onto the resolution a few years earlier.

Harman claimed that a genocide resolution would “embarrass or isolate the Turkish leadership.” This claim came suspiciously soon after she met with Turkey’s threatening Prime Minister, Recep Erdogan. Apparently, recognizing a genocide requires an OK from the perpetrating country’s leader.

But Harman reached truly ridiculous heights by claiming– again, this was in 2007 – that it was “obvious” that Turkey’s “leadership” was needed for “resolving the Israel-Palestine issue.”  Turkey had never, of course, played a significant role in mediating between Israelis and Palestinians. What really caused Harman’s genocide flip-flop?

Jewish groups and Turke

AIPAC was (and is) one of several major Jewish American organizations that have colluded with Turkey to, among other things, defeat Armenian genocide resolutions. Israel, Turkey, and Jewish groups formed their ménage-à-trois in the 1990’s.

Yola Johnston, Community Outreach Director for the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, has admitted that AIPAC, the American Jewish Committee, B’nai B’rith, her own organization, and “the Jewish lobby” have “quite actively supported Turkey in their efforts to prevent the so-called Armenian genocide resolution from passing.”

AIPAC, reported the Washington Times last year, had “lit up the phones” against the genocide resolution when “the Turks” asked a “senior researcher” at AIPAC to do so.  That “senior researcher” and “architect of the Jewish community’s support for Turkey” was none other than AIPAC’s notorious Keith Weissman.   So the Harman-AIPAC-Weissman threesome was at the center of not only a spy scandal but also a genocide cover-up.

And there’s more. Yet another scandal may have induced Harman’s genocide duplicity.

Anti-Defamation League scandal

Harman wrote her genocide flip-flop letter to Chairman Lantos just as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) was taking a beating in the U.S. and internationally for denying the Armenian genocide and helping Turkey lobby against Armenian genocide recognition.  Human rights activists, principled Jews, and Armenian Americans had just months earlier launched a campaign (see NoPlaceForDenial.com) that was to result in more than a dozen Massachusetts cities’ evicting the ADL’s so-called “No Place for Hate” anti-bias program.

The Turkish government was furious that the embarrassing arrangement among it, Jewish groups, and Israel was being splashed across the headlines.

Prime Minister Erdogan made a frantic call to Israeli President Peres, while Turkey’s foreign minister reportedly warned the Israeli ambassador that “our bilateral relations will suffer.”

Did Harman, who was certainly aware of this uproar, panic at the prospect of a further deterioration in the already strained relations between Israel and Turkey?  Did she ask Lantos to kill the genocide resolution because Turkey would blame Israel, AIPAC, the ADL, and even Harman herself if the resolution succeeded?

Considering the timing, Harman’s relationship to Israel and the genocide-denying AIPAC, and the illogical explanations for her flip-flop, it seems probable.  Though the House Committee narrowly passed the resolution, Harman had to be pleased that it did not make it any further.  Her appeasement of Turkey, however, proved to be in vain:

• Erdogan was soon calling Shimon Peres a mass murderer  (January 2009) for Israel’s offensive against Gaza.

• Israel scolded and humiliated Turkey’s ambassador (January 2010) in response to Turkish criticism and an anti-Israeli TV show.

• Israeli commandos shot nine Turks to death on a ship that had tried to break the Gaza blockade (May 2010).

• Erdogan has expelled the Israeli ambassador, cut defense ties with Tel Aviv, and threatened military retaliation unless Israeli apologizes and pays compensation for the flotilla killings.

But when, like Harman, one has few firm principles and has fooled herself into believing that a country such as Turkey is a friend, she inevitably winds up with yogurt on her face.

No self-respecting institution would have considered hiring anyone with Harman’s background.   That may explain why the Wilson Center hired her.  It has little respect for its mission or the American people.

The Wilson Center flouts Congress

The Woodrow Wilson Memorial Act of 1968 was crystal clear:  The WWC must commemorate Wilson’s “ideals and concerns” and memorialize “his accomplishments.” Yet it has ignored large swaths of the Wilson administration’s record on the Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia), Turkey, and the Middle East.

The WWC isn’t just thumbing its nose at Congress and taxpayers.  It has closed its eyes to a wealth of political knowledge about a region in which the U.S. has enormous interests.  The Caucasus, for example, is a major locus for producing and transporting oil and gas.  It’s also ground-zero in the new Cold War between the U.S. and Russia, particularly since the Russian-Georgian war of 2008.

Donald Wilson Bush, President of the Woodrow Wilson Legacy Foundation and a Wilson family descendant, has rightly accused the WWC of “violating [its] very own mission and purpose.”

Wilson’s Record

Wilson and the State Department’s record on the region from the WW 1 era is extensive.  Though the U.S. did not formally declare war against Turkey in WW1, Turkey was the main ally of Germany, America’s enemy.  Wilson condemned, in the strongest terms, Turkey’s genocide of Armenians and was a fervent advocate of Armenian independence.   By the terms of the Treaty of Sèvres – a product of the Paris Peace Conference in 1920 – the U.S. formally delineated the borders of that part of Armenia and Kurdistan that now lies within Turkey’s eastern regions.  Turkey later reneged on the Treaty.

Yet, despite the clear stipulation of Congress, Wilson’s record has been almost totally ignored by the WWC.  Indeed, three years ago, historian and legal scholar Ara Papian, a Canadian resident and former Armenian Ambassador to Canada, applied for a WWC Fellowship to do ground-breaking research on the U.S. archival record regarding Turkey and the Caucasus – a proposal the WWC should have jumped at.  Papian was rejected without explanation.  Ironically, several months ago Lee Hamilton told the American Historical Association that U.S. foreign policy officials need the views of “historians.”  Yet as WWC president, he all but ignored the history of Wilson’s Caucasus policies.

Tainted corporate cash

The WWC has been corrupted by its gluttony for corporate cash.  Case in point:  it acknowledged that money was the main reason it journeyed to Turkey in 2010 to honor a Turkish billionaire whose Dogus Holding conglomerate is a WWC donor, and to give a much-criticized award to Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

Cong. Gary Ackerman (D-NY), Chair of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, blasted Lee Hamilton for honoring Davutoglu.  Ackerman cited Turkey’s military occupation of Cyprus, closure of the border with Armenia, and denial of the Armenian genocide.  Honoring Davutoglu was “absolutely inconsistent with the mission of the WWC and the ideals that animated President Wilson’s administration and foreign policy.”

The Wilson Center, added Donald Wilson Bush, had engaged in “Turkish diplomatic appeasement.”  It had “sacrificed its legitimacy as a ‘neutral forum for open, serious, and informed dialogue.’”

“Why,” asked Claudia Rosett, “should Congress keep fueling this morally blank, misleading and venal exercise [the WWC] with millions of American tax dollars?”  Good question.

Part of why the WWC has all but ignored Wilson’s record on Turkey and the Caucasus is undoubtedly that many major donors (present and past members of its elite “Wilson Alliance“) have lobbied for, or been members of, trade organizations that have lobbied for Turkey and against the Armenian resolution.  These include Alcoa, BAE Systems, Bechtel, Boeing, Bombardier, Chevron, Coca Cola, Exxon-Mobil and Honeywell.

In fact, Harman’s predecessor, Lee Hamilton, engaged in a clear conflict of interest during his tenure by sitting on the board of BAE Systems, a defense giant which does lots of business with Turkey.  Last year a Federal judge slapped BAE’s parent corporation with a $400 million criminal fine for “deception, duplicity and knowing violations of law … on an enormous scale.”  Too bad the judge didn’t also look into the Wilson Center.

Hamilton also sat on the board of the Albright Stonebridge Group, a “global strategy firm” headed by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Hamilton’s WWC bio, incredibly, was dead silent about his corporate affiliations. This same Lee Hamilton co-chaired the official National Commission on the 9/11 attacks, whose report has been widely criticized as incomplete and biased.    Hamilton and Harman, you see, can be counted on not to rock the corporate establishment’s boat.

The WWC is rife with other questionable characters, including those with deep ties to Turkey, such as former board member and present Wilson Council member Ignacio Sanchez, a lobbyist employed by DLA Piper, which is a registered foreign agent for Turkey.  And former Wilson Public Policy Scholar Marc Grossman, ex-US ambassador to Turkey and DLA Piper bigwig.  “Coincidentally,” Sanchez and Grossman were both on the WWC Search Committee that hired Harman.

Made for each other

If ever there was a marriage made in hell, therefore, Jane Harman and the Wilson Center are it:

• The WWC receives millions in “donations” from the military-industrial complex, which influences the Center’s agenda and policies.  Similarly, Harman – a former Defense Department lawyer – has received large campaign contributions from defense and aerospace firms’ Political Action Committees and employees, including those in El Segundo, a key military–industrial center located in her former Congressional district.

“Coincidentally,” major Wilson Center donors BAE Systems (Lee Hamilton’s comrade-in-arms), Boeing, and Chevron have offices in El Segundo.  Indeed, BAE, Boeing, and Chevron were her “constituents” (and American Turkish Council members) not only when she was in Congress. Those corporations – another “coincidence” – are her “constituents” again, at the WWC.  Might the WWC have hired Harman for her expertise in raking in military-industrial “donations”?

• The WWC has ingratiated itself with Turkey.  It has given awards to its Foreign Minister and a major Turkish corporate donor, and virtually ignored Wilson’s policies regarding Turkey and the Caucasus.   Harman, too, has ingratiated herself with Turkey.  She reversed her stance on the Congress’s Armenian genocide resolution (and gave absurd reasons for doing so).

• And just as the Wilson Center has gotten away (so far, anyway) with violating its Congressional mandate, Jane Harman has escaped prosecution (so far, anyway) for her dealings with a “foreign agent” in the AIPAC espionage scandal.

No, there’s no prospect that Harman will lead the WWC to adhere to the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Act of 1968, fulfill its pledge to be a “neutral forum for open, serious, and informed dialogue,” and release the grip that mega-corporations have on it.

If Congress of its own volition will not bring the Wilson Center to its senses, then Congress must be pushed by the American people to do so.  Other possibilities are investigations and legal action by third parties.

Just don’t count on Jane Harman’s cooperation.

France’s President Nicholas Sarkozy gains headlines, and mostly for appropriate reasons. He is in the news almost every day – marriage to a celebrity model, leading the charge against dispatched Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, whom he befriended months earlier, scuffling with Germany’s Prime Minister Angela Merkel over how to save the Euro and French banks, camera shots with the new baby, and at an October 7, 2011 meeting in Armenia stating that “Turkey’s refusal to recognize the [Armenian] genocide would force France to make such denials a criminal offense.”

Peoples who suffered genocide have the right to solicit compensation for displaced survivors from the guilty government and to seek means to correct the wrong. Others have an obligation to help. Nevertheless, knowing that President Sarkozy’s statement would irritate Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan and force him to reject the bill, there must be more to the French President’s actions and to the French National Assembly December 20, 2011 vote that proposed a year in jail and a fine of $58,000 to those publicly denying the alleged genocide.

Note: The expression ‘alleged genocide’ is used for impartiality. There is neither intention to deny genocide nor assent to a thesis that it did not occur.

What does the bill accomplish for France?

Is denial of an Armenian genocide a polarizing issue in France? Do citizens of La Patria openly debate Ottoman Empire responsibility for an alleged genocide that happened one hundred years ago? Does French jurisprudence need this bill to prevent a significant offense? The necessity to pass a law that makes it a crime to deny the alleged Armenian genocide is baffling. To whom is it directed and what is its purpose?

The bill will not help the victims; after all, they are gone. What happened in the Armenian part of Turkey almost a century ago is not a French issue, and therefore will neither resolve a present or future French problem nor change French life. It is doubtful that many citizens thought about the issue and argued a need for the bill.

The bill will create problems

Old wounds are opened, and with them renewed hatreds will occur. As the western world starts to overcome its prejudices and learns to appreciate the Turkish nation, Sarkozy shakes the world with accusations of criminal behavior by the almost ancient Ottoman government.

Just when Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has embarked on reconciliation with Armenia and his own Armenian citizens, a challenge interrupts the peace-minded progress. After decades of hostility, Turkey and Armenia signed an agreement in October 2009 to establish diplomatic relations and open their borders. Unfortunately, neither government has ratified the agreement due to the lack of settlement of a dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory that was formally inside Azerbaijan and, since a 1990s war, is occupied by ethnic Armenians.

The bill, written one hundred years after an event, makes it illegal for people to rebut accusations that their ancestors initiated genocide and considers them complicit in the atrocities if they defend their elders. The Turks are probably asking themselves: “If this bill is necessary, why aren’t there bills concerning complicity of many western powers in the mass killings of Indigenous populations in the Western Hemisphere, African populations throughout Africa, which includes slavery in the United States, Asians, most prominently in China, India, and the Philippines, and their own populations in Europe?”

Not stopping atrocities, and then criminalizing words that question the extent of the atrocities, smacks of duplicity; an attempt to hide failures by achieving political correctness. Isn’t there something wrong in a democratic nation when opinions can be made illegal and illegal deeds are not prevented?

Why aren’t remaining effects of previous genocides not directly countered?

Existing effects of previous genocides require more attention than bills that punish people for denying genocide. In North, Central and South America, Indigenous peoples who suffered genocide continue to struggle for cultural survival and to maintain their dignity. Inca and Mapuche from South America, Maya from Central America, and Indigenous peoples in North America remain disempowered in trying to regain the land and resources stolen from them and find themselves slowly decimated and slipping into obscurity. Grief still inhabits their faces and squalor is forced upon them.

Disadvantages arising from past actions have been, and always will, impede descendants of American slaves in their progress. While severe disadvantage is not easily overcome, advantage is capitalized and adds to advantage. African Americans deserve a compensation that enables them to overcome the disadvantages in order to achieve an equal status with White America.

Why are these victims of genocide not being properly helped? The answer is simple: the economic capital (a huge amount to right the wrongs done to the African Americans) will not return a positive political benefit. Note that these genocides are often denied with one statement – a natural course of history – and the detractors are not punished.

What motivated a bill that criminalizes denial of an alleged genocide?

Proving hidden motivations for passage of the bill cannot be easily justified or demonstrated. Frame the question in another context: Knowing that Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan would disregard President Sarkozy’s statement and vehemently reject the bill, how will others benefit from a bill that criminalizes denial of an alleged Armenian genocide?

Prime Minister Erdogan has taken independent stances that lead many to regard him his courage. His stances and moral attitude have generated opposition and disturbed those who envy his popularity. The French bill shifts the moral compass from Erdogan to Sarkozy and reduces the impact from Erdogan’s independent positions.

The Justice and Development Party (AKP) has steered Turkey away from the severe nationalist polices of its militarist predecessors. The bill places Erdogan and his AKP Party in a difficult position. Accept the bill and lose favor with a great majority of the Turkish electorate. Reject the bill and give the appearance of following a renewed nationalist policy.

Those who view Turkey as too independent, too large, and too Muslim seek any excuse to keep Turkey out of the European Union. Add to the list Turkey’s unwillingness to recognize the Ottoman Empire’s culpability in the alleged Armenian genocide.

When friendly with Turkey, Israel rejected recognition of the alleged Armenian genocide. Now that the two nations are declared antagonists, is it possible that Israel, whose Knesset held a renewed discussion on recognizing the Armenian genocide, played a role in promoting the bill in order to embarrass Erdogan?

Armenia has an unresolved situation with Azerbaijan over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Armenian lobby consistently works to keep the atrocity alive and direct sympathy to Armenia.

France has a law that calls genocide denial a criminal offense. People are questioning why the law is applied to the World War II holocaust and not to other genocides.

An Armenian lobby and contributors can play a significant role in the coming French presidential election.

The bill might backfire on President Sarkozy and damage French interests.

An injured Turkey, that has become dubious of a wounded European Union, might shift its allegiance and interchange from the western world to Russia, China and India. If that happens, NATO, who relies greatly on Turkey’s geo-strategic position, will find itself engaging a more difficult partner.

Preventing genocide and assisting its remaining victims has highest priority. However, perpetually aggravating hatred rather than pursuing reconciliation and using a genocide for enhancing a personal or national agenda create suspicion. Making criminals of those who recognize atrocities but deny that ancestors deserve to be included as purveyors of genocide is a controversial afterthought and an arm twister: “Say uncle or go to jail.”

“To be internationalist is to pay our debt to humanity” says Fidel Castro and this can be read on many billboards in Cuba.

What is internationalism?—cooperation among people and nations, states my dictionary. The book of definitions maintains that internationalism is a principle of communism and socialism. It is the belief of ideological leaders such as Lenin, Fidel and Che.

Che wrote in his essay, “Socialism and Man”, that proletarian internationalism isn’t just a duty but a necessity. If revolutionary leaders forget this, Che wrote, the revolution will lose its inspiration and imperialism will benefit.

Che was also known for having severely criticized Soviet Union leadership for having lost its internationalism with the world’s proletariat and the Third World. Following up on Che’s critique, I find it important to criticize communist and socialist parties, and governments led by these parties, which let down people who are oppressed by, or invaded by, national or foreign powers.

Internationalism in action

1. Internationalists must support resistance fighters against invasions. Therefore, one must chastise political parties and groups that give political or moral support to those who call themselves the Iraq Communist Party as it is part of the Quisling government the USA terrorist state set in. ICP leaders live side by side the invaders in the Green Zone. That there are organizations in the United States, UK, Denmark and elsewhere, which call themselves communist or socialist parties and that cooperate with the world’s greatest terrorist state is incomprehensible, shameful, immoral and anti-internationalist.

2. The same applies to people who still support the Zionist state of Israel, which commits genocide against the Palestinian people. Millions of decent people have gotten together to support Palestinians in many ways, including Ships to Gaza. In Denmark, four groups of people have challenged the state’s terrorist laws by donating solidarity aid to the secular leftist PFLP which is part of the Palestinian resistance. Rebellion (Denmark), Fighters and Lovers, Horserød-Stuthoff Association (veterans of WWII resistance fighters imprisoned in Horserød and Stuthoff prisons), and TIB’s club (local carpenters near Copenhagen) have aided both PFLP and FARC, Colombian armed liberation movement.

3. Internationalist can not cooperate with US-NATO aggressive wars, which always have the goal of controlling that country’s economy and politics for capitalist profits. It is shameful that many experienced socialists and communists, as well as naïve progressive people, have backed up West’s big capitalist plans to take over Libya, and thus have bombed Libya back to the stone age. Denmark was one of only six countries that dropped tens of thousands of bombs on Libya, destroying much of it infrastructure, schools, hospitals…In fact, Denmark dropped more bombs on Libya than it has on any other country in its history, Afghanistan included. And the pilots were cowards as there was no resistance by Libya’s air force, already decimated.

This conflict has little to do with the Arab Spring movement. It is a conflict between internal war lords, with ordinary people involved who wished to increase democracy but who were misled by US-NATO whose forces seek to control Libya’s oil and avoid a gold-based currency that Gaddafi was promoting amongst all African countries. Now, US-NATO has placed a lackey government in Tripoli just as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq.

4. Internationalists must also criticize comrade governments, such as Cuba and ALBA governments in Latin America, when they make big mistakes regarding internationalism. We can’t be true comrades-solidarity activists by keeping our mouths shut when this occurs. Such is the case with their support of the brutal government of Sri Lanka, which practices genocide against the minority Tamil population. Ever since independence from Great Britain, in 1947, the majority Sinhalese governments and chauvinist Buddhist monk system has discriminated against Tamils. They have constantly been treated as second class citizens, their language and religions relegated to secondary status without national recognition. Even pogroms have been employed with the brutal murder of many thousands on various occasions. And since May 2009, following the end of a 26-year civil war, ethnic cleansing in the traditional Tamil homeland in the north and eastern areas is the rule of the day.

Cuba and ALBA have spoken only positively of their historic ties with the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), to which Sri Lanka is a member, but so are 130 other nations. One cannot, in the name of protecting each nation’s sovereignty, avoid critique when one or more of these nations oppresses or conducts pogroms and genocide against part of the population. Nor can we accept as an excuse the immoral geo-political game that nearly all governments of whatever color play.

We shall also criticize Bolivia, Uruguay, Brazil and other Latin American progressive governments for helping the US and France in their ouster of the only decent and only democratically elected people’s president in Haiti’s history, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. These Latin American governments actually assist the US’s 2004 coup d´état against Aristide by placing occupying troops in the small country, seeking to dampen the people’s anger. These progressive governments should, instead, back up the people’s desire to bring their president back to state power, just as they sought to do for President Zelaya in Honduras where national capitalists and generals kicked him out of office, with background support once again by the United States government.

5. On the personal and organizational plain, internationalism operates when workers of a major firm ask people to boycott a product because of the mistreatment of the workers by the firm. This is the case with Coca-Cola whose workers in Colombia asked us to stop buying the “drink of the death squad” (David Rovics song), because it hires mercenaries to murder workers who seek to organize a union and struggle for collective bargaining. Workers in other countries, such as Guatemala, and farmers in India have asked the same.

It is with joy that I can state that here where we gather (carpenters’ hall in Valby, Denmark), this union is one of the few local unions and political or grass roots groups in Denmark that has boycotted Coca-Cola. This is something any and all individuals can do. It is just a soda drink. So drink something else. Boycotting Coca-Cola is just like boycotting all products from Israel and Sri Lanka. It is a simple act of solidarity, of internationalism.

Charlotte and I have just returned from a six week trip in India where two of my books (“Tamil Nation in Sri Lanka” and “Sounds of Venezuela”) were published by New Century Book House, Tamil Nadu. The Tamil book concerns the history and contemporary life of the Tamil people in that island-nation, and the need to act in solidarity with them. The Venezuela short book concerns this people’s efforts to create a better world for themselves and solidarity with all peoples. When people asked us where we are from we often replied that we are “internationalists”. Interestingly, many Indians understood our meaning and were pleased to think in terms of being brothers and sisters in the world.

This concept, and feeling, of brotherly love, of internationalism has taken off in a bigger way, in 2011, than in many decades. It started in Tunisia, and has expanded to the indignados in Spain, to the anti-capitalists in Wall Street and in hundreds of cities throughout the US and the West.

We have much to criticize and yet much to be glad for as 2012 opens. We must remember and appreciate those who set us off on this new anti-capitalist/anti-imperialist, non-violent and democratic revolution—from the martyr in Tunisia (street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi) and his Iraqi spiritual brother a bit earlier, shoe-thrower Muntazar al-Zaidi, to Occupy Wall Street protestors to Bradley Manning and Julian Assange and co-workers at Wikileaks, who helped spark it all by blowing the whistle on the war criminals. These modern-day Paris Commune resisters without arms—OWS and Occupy the World—are growing and they are presenting a vision and with it a program-in-discussion that must be studied and supported.

Internationalism is an endless struggle, an endless challenge. It does not end even when one or more of our political parties take over the governing reigns. We activists from the streets must always keep our wary eyes pinned on the leaders, regardless of their names, just as our clear eyes cast light upon humanity’s future.

Neumann reveals that Moshe Dayan expelled Palestinians even as late as 1951!

Despite some moments of remorse, the former member of this terror group tells the interviewer that he refuses to talk about the massacres, in particular, because he participated in them. He also tries to portray Palestinian villages as all made of straw and mud houses! Perhaps the selective amnesia that has afflicted almost all Jewish Israelis has not spared Neumann.

Warning to Palestinian refugees watching this: it can be really difficult to listen to parts of this testimony. I had to stop the video twice … the nonchalance with which Neumann describes (in clearly sanitized language) the forced expulsion, the killings of farmers tending their grapevines, … is overwhelming.

In 2005, the relatives of nine Spanish nationals killed in Rwanda and the Congo in 1994, 1996, 1997 and 2000, filed a lawsuit against the government of Rwanda resulting in the issuing of Interpol international arrest warrants for 40 Rwandan officials of Kagame’s régime.

On 6 February 2008, the Spanish Investigative Judge Andreu Merelles issued an indictment charging 40 current or former high-ranking Rwandan military officials with serious crimes including genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and terrorism, perpetrated over a period of 12 years, from 1990 to 2002, against the civilian population, and primarily against members of the Hutu ethnic group.

While the investigations were initially based on complaints from families of nine Spaniards who were killed, harmed or disappeared during the period at issue, the indictment was subsequently expanded to include crimes committed against Rwandan and Congolese victims, based on the universal jurisdiction doctrine. The indictment rules out the prosecution of Paul Kagame, arguing that he may not be prosecuted as long as he holds the position of President of Rwanda.

According to Spanish lawyer Jordi Palou Loverdos:

Spain’s Audencia Nacional was only met by silence when it duly and formally asked the U.N. to hand over the evidence of these crimes perpetrated against people in 1996 and 1997 or the evidence of the pillaging of valuable mineral resources conducted in these same years or earlier. The international media which had access to the UN report have made public the fact that the UN High Commissioner responsible for the report  keeps- separately from the latter- a confidential  data bank containing evidence that implicates individual Rwandan and Ugandan military officials.

In spite of threats and intimidation from agents linked to Western governments and from the United Nations, the Spanish High Court authorities are continuing to hear evidence against the Ugandan and Rwandan proxy forces of the United States in Africa.

Keith Harmon Snow has been researching the real facts of the tragedy known to the world as the Rwandan genocide since 1994, and has, along with many other experts, evidence to prove that the United States, Britain and Israel were responsible for the training, financing and covert military and logistic support of Kagame and Museveni’s forces.

On 6 April 1994, the UPDF/RPA proxy forces assassinated the Rwandan and Burundian presidents (Juvenal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira), their military chiefs of staff, and the French pilots of the plane they were flying on, thus provoking and participating in the extermination of hundreds of thousands of Hutus and Tutsis in one of the most violent civil wars in modern history.

Snow also presented detailed evidence of the war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity committed by Kagame and Museveni’s proxy forces, after they invaded the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1996, again backed by the Pentagon, Israel and NATO allies. The Congo/Zaire invasion was commanded by generals Paul Kagame and James Kabarebe, and they involved an officer attached to Kabarebe named Hyppolite Kanambe — alias Joseph Kabila, the strongman in Congo today.

The ongoing Rwandan occupation and plunder of eastern Congo has resulted in the deaths of some ten million people, making this the worst war since the Second World War. The Central African holocaust has been largely ignored by the global mass media corporations who are calling for “humanitarian intervention” in Syria, much as they did to justify invading Libya, by the same countries responsible for supporting mass carnage in Africa.

In spite of orders from Laurent Désire Kabila (Congo’s interim president of 1998-2001), to disengage from the Congo, the RPA and UPDF re-invaded the Congo in 1998, resulting in the Second Congolese War. Although the war is said to have ended in 2001, mass killing of the populations in the mineral rich Kivu provinces of Eastern Congo, under the leadership of these US-backed dictators, has continued to this day.

Contrary to its stated “peacekeeping” mission, the United Nations Observers Mission for the Congo (MONUC) and its follow on dependent, Monusco, has been deployed in the Congo since 2000 and has been involved in sexual violence and contraband activities. MONUC has provided cover for the Rwandan, Ugandan and Burundi forces, USAID, the Pentagon’s new Africa Command (AFRICOM), and scores of Western mining corporations who are plundering the Eastern Congo.

Snow gave detailed testimony to the Audencia Nacional of the American, British, Belgian, German, Israeli and Australian mining corporations who have profited from the Pentagon’s holocaust in the Congo.  Banro Corporation, Barrick Gold and many companies run by the Blattner dynasty have profited astronomically from the pillaging of the Congolese people’s resources, as domestic warlords and Western elites enrich themselves while the local people starve.

Snow alleges that these corporations have direct links to the criminal networks run by Paul Kagame, who are plundering the Kivu provinces of the Eastern Congo and massacring the Hutu Rwandan refugees there.

Though the majority of victims have been from the populations of Rwandan Hutus, Rwandan Tutsis and Twa have also been targeted, both in Congo and Rwanda, and many Congolese ethnic groups have been targeted in the Congo. The Kagame regime is determined to eliminate all possible opposition to its rule and to occupy and annex eastern Congo to create a “Republic of the Volcanoes” controlled by Rwanda and populated with satellite US military bases.

Snow told the Spanish court that details collected by the UN Panel of Experts report of 2001 to 2010, detailing the illegal occupation, plunder and war crimes in the Congo, have been watered down by special interest groups linked to Western governments, thus shielding Western corporations and governments from scrutiny by the International Criminal Court and the Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda.

Trained in the notorious Fort Levenworth, Kansas (USA) and advised by former British prime minister Tony Blair, Paul Kagame is without question one of the most evil dictators in modern history. The scale and intensity of his atrocities dwarf those of Pinochet, Suharto and Somoza combined.

In spite of expertise gained on the ground throughout Central Africa spanning 20 years, expert testimony to the US House of Representatives in 2001, extensive work as genocide consultant to the United Nations and numerous meticulously documented reports, Keith Harmon Snow’s work continues to be ignored by the corporate media and many outlets who claim to be ‘progressive’ and ‘independent’ .

According to  Snow:

U.S.-based groups fronted by the intelligence and defense establishment and pretending to be ‘grass roots non-government organizations’ — such as the ENOUGH project, Raise Hope for Congo, Resolve, STAND and Save Darfur — have co-opted the grass roots movement and are whitewashing the issues and controlling the media, academic and public spaces to prevent the true grass roots voices for Central Africa from being heard and to prevent the deeper issues from being understood.¹

In preparation for a documentary film to be released next year on the African holocaust, Keith Harmon Snow has just completed a series of interviews with distinguished scholars, investigative journalists and lawyers from France, Spain, Germany, Camaroun and Rwanda. The film, as yet untitled, is expected to be aired in film festivals throughout the world and will also be available online for mass viewing.

Rwanda and the Congo belong to the ninth circle of global capitalism’s Dantesque inferno. It is the circle of betrayal; betrayal of the high ideals of the United Nations to uphold the rule of law and work towards the goal of international peace and stability; betrayal of the trust ordinary citizens of the world have in media corporations to tell them what is really happening in the world, so that leaders and potentates can be held to account.

Uncovering the truth about the role of Western imperialism in the violence that has beset Central Africa since the fall of the USSR to the present day, is of vital importance, as the obscene and racist myth of an African genocide America “failed to prevent” constitutes the mendacious and  insane basis for the Orwellian “responsibility to protect” doctrine.

Western governments and their pro-Kagame lobbies in the mainstream media are quick to smear as ‘genocide deniers’ those who challenge the lies and distortions of the official genocide narrative of the current Rwandan régime by exposing the inconvenient and politically incorrect facts. In the case of Rwanda and the Congo, it should now be abundantly clear who those genocide-deniers are.

1. E-mail correspondence with Keith Harmon Snow

Europeans invaded the Americans and stole the lands and wealth held by native peoples for thousands of years. They enslaved black Africans who they held as slaves and even after slavery ended they kept them as second-class citizens.

Black people developed various forms of struggle including civil disobedience, sit-ins, pickets, mass rallies, propaganda, and voting for equality where possible. Another form of struggle was the Black Panther Party’s armed self-defence when attacked by Ku Klux Klan and the ruling class’ police. Another form was the Gravey Movement that called for separation from the United States, demanding territory in the south. Very much like the Tamils after the 1976 Vattukottai resolution.

In the United States millions of blacks and whites fought this racist discrimination for over a century and eventually won most basic rights but not before millions were arrested, imprisoned for long times, and many murdered. Many thousands of black people were lynched, burned alive, mutilated, tortured to death until the 1980s.

Fidel Castro: “Those who are exploited are our compatriots all over the world; and the exploiters all over the world are out enemies…Our country is really the whole world, and all the revolutionaries of the world are our brothers.” “To be internationalist is to settle our debt with humanity.”

Che Guevara from Socialism and Man: “The revolutionary is the ideological motor force of the revolution. If he forgets his proletarian internationalism, the revolution, which he heads will cease to be an inspiring force and he will sink into a comfortable lethargy, which imperialism, our irreconcilable enemy, will utilize well. Proletarian internationalism is a duty, but it is also a revolutionary necessity. So we educate our people.”

I believe that these principles apply to the Tamils of Sri Lanka. I believe Che would agree with your struggle for equality and when not possible to achieve within the Sri Lankan chauvinist context, he would understand your fight for your own nationhood.

I think this is also what Lenin meant in his 1916 thesis, “The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination”:

“Victorious socialism must necessarily establish a full democracy and, consequently, not only introduce full equality of nations but also realize the right of the oppressed nations to self-determination, that is, the right to free political separation.”

I am hurt and deeply disappointed that the government of Cuba—where I have lived and worked side by side with the people and government for eight years—as well as the socialist-progressive governments of Venezuela, Bolivia and other Latin American governments have not understood that those principles must apply to the Tamil people of Sri Lanka. I got involved in solidarity with your people’s struggle because you have been so brutally treated, and because of these righteous principles expressed by Lenin, Fidel and Che. I have written critically about these governments siding with the Sinhalese governments of Sri Lanka while it denies the Tamil people those basic principles and rights, and commits genocide.

Perhaps Cuba+ have not understood the history of struggle that Tamils have undergone to win full equal rights before taking up arms. For 30 years you fought peacefully but you were met with brutal force, with pogroms/massacres of hundreds and thousands of people—even worse than that used against blacks in the US, and against Palestinians by Israelis. And, unfortunately, it was not only the governments that have done this against Tamils but also misguided Buddhist monks who betray the peaceful, coexistence values of Buddhism.

Your people’s organizations must meet and discuss these realities with the communist and socialist parties and with people’s grass roots and indigenous organizations in Latin America and elsewhere. You must explain to them your history, why you had to take up arms and fight for separation, for an independent nation. They have to hear of your suffering, of your struggles, why Tamil Eelam is a NECESSITY. You must remind them what they say about international solidarity, about what Lenin meant about political separation when the ruling powers will not grant a people their basic democratic and equal rights.

The progressive governments have won majority votes for new constitutions in Bolivia, in Ecuador, in Venezuela that grant equal rights to their indigenous peoples. In Bolivia, for instance, under the new constitution there are four official national languages, three of them are indigenous ones as well as Spanish. The same equalitarian development is happening in several progressive, pro-socialist governments in Latin America. If these people could know you simply want these same rights, they would listen to you and stop backing Sri Lanka. But they have been misguided because when they hear the worst terrorist in the world—the United States of America government—raise a little finger of possible criticism that maybe the Sri Lanka government should investigate itself to find some official scapegoat for violating human rights, Cuba should react against this hypocrisy. But they must know that in this case the Sri Lanka government is a terrible violator of human rights, and not just against the Tamils, but also against Muslims, the indigenous tribes, and it also exploits Sinhalese workers and the poor, and castes.

We must understand that Cuba, and so many governments and peoples, has been victimized by the United States false accusation that it commits “human rights abuse”. Cuba has been blockaded by the US since its victory in 1959. The US tried to overthrow the new revolution in April 1961. It brought the entire world to the brink of a nuclear war in October 1962. The US has sabotaged Cuba, murdered and handicapped thousands of its citizens; it even infiltrated bacteriological diseases in its livestock, its grains and sugar cane.

What has Cuba done to “deserve” this murderous aggression? It has done what Big Capital does not do, what imperialists will not do. It has introduced full and free education and health care. It has assured every citizen food and shelter. No one starves. 80% of its people own their own homes after paying the state simply what it actually costs to build them.

It has organized an excellent system of disaster management in which people and their animals are evacuated before hurricanes hit the island nation. And more often than not no one is killed, and their livestock is saved. That is not what happens in the United States especially in the areas where blacks and poor people live and are struck by natural disasters.

Cuba came to the aid of Angola when attacked by apartheid South Africa. Cuba, alongside with the new Venezuela, comes to the aid of tens of millions of people in scores of land around the world with their medical care, curing even blindness, and educating people to read and write, offering sports and technical assistance. Cuba has more doctors serving the international arena than is offered by all the governments in the United Nations. Cuba does not export war and torture, disease and starvation. It exports “human capital”.

Tamils in Tamil Nadu, Sri Lanka Tamil refugees here and in the Diaspora should not rely on the greatest terrorist in the world to help them. The Yankees offer no help without humiliating costs. We must be aware that since World War 11, the US has invaded/intervened militarily 160 times in 66 countries. We must understand that now with a black-faced puppet president of Big Capital, the imperialists are at war in seven countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Ethiopia and now Uganda. They kill tens of millions; they torture hundreds of thousands; they starve hundreds of millions.

US’s staunch ally, Zionist Israel commits genocide against the Palestinian people. It offered Mossad intelligence, great amounts of weaponry, killer aircraft and even pilots to Sri Lanka, in order to murder the Tamils. After the end of the war, May 2009, Sri Lanka sent its military chief-of-staff, Donald Perera, to Israel as its ambassador, a reward for Zionist assistance. He told the largest Zionist daily, Yedioth Abornoth: “I consider your country a partner in the war against terror,” thus coupling terrorism with the Palestinians’ struggle for their homeland and the Tamils’ simple right to exist in peace and equality.

Perera spoke proudly of having “a great relationship with your military industries and with Israel Aerospace industries.”

Perera spoke about the murder, on May 31, 2010, of nine Turkish solidarity activists bound for Gaza with survival supplies: “I can understand that Israel had to protect itself.”

Perhaps because of the complexity of geo-politics, the history of standing for sovereignty of the member nations of the Non-Alignment Movement (NAM), the leaders of Cuba and ALBA lands (Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Latin America) cannot support the goal of a separate nation within Sri Lanka. But they could be convinced to chastise the Sri Lankan government for its atrocities against the Tamil people, and the other oppressed people under the chauvinist Sinhalese leadership. They could see within the context of their moral ideology that it is only right that Tamils must have equality and the basic right to exist without fear of murder and takeovers of their homes and lands. Your peoples’ organizations should remind these pro-Palestinian governments that it is only Israel that supports the US blockade against Cuba; that it is the US and Israel that lead the tiny opposition to Palestine’s right to be a member of the United Nations.

Regardless of whether Cuba has achieved socialism—it is a long process after all and there is so much destruction and subversion coming from the Yankee imperialists—the Cuban people and the government are still worthy of our love and support. They have conducted no wars or torture against any people and they have helped many millions. It is now time that they are approached by all your organizations and become convinced to come to the aid of their natural brothers and sisters in Sri Lanka—the oppressed Tamil people.

We have wandered over the deserts and the seas. We have been hungry and thirsty. We have been murdered and tortured. We are of the working class, of the castes; we are many races and nationalities. We share a common vision: freedom and equality; bread and water on the table; a shelter over our heads. We must fight together to live in peace and harmony.

We must unite around the world and struggle for an independent international investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity against Sri Lanka government leaders.

We must call for a worldwide Boycott of Sri Lanka. Che Guevara would be on our side today!

Since that particular court is the imperial court of the empire the question is really asking them to do a coup amounting to a counter counter-revolution. The revolution was in 1776 when America started the fight that led to the 1789 Constitution of the United States of America which gave birth to Constitutional Democracy. The counter-revolution was in 1871 when the United States Congress enacted an Appropriations Act with a rider tacked on at the last minute abolishing the Indian tribal sovereignty. Till then it had sheltered under the protection of the commerce, defence and treaty clauses interpreted by the US Court’s constitutionally constitutive precedents with regard to the constitutional relationship between the United States and “Indian Tribes and foreign Nations” within the meaning of the Commerce Clause Article I, §8, ¶3, that says Congress is: To regulate Commerce with Indian Tribes and foreign Nations subject to the Protection of their Sovereignty and Possession under the Treaty Clause Article II, §2, ¶2 that delegates to the President the “Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur,” and also subject to the Defence Clauses Article I, §8, ¶1 says “The Congress shall have power to…provide for the common defense…” ¶11. “To declare War [and] ¶15. “To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.

The counter-revolution was perfected when the courts of the United States and Canada decided not to permit anyone to challenge the legality of the abolition of the previously established constitutional right of Indian tribes and foreign Nations to an Answer from the Supreme Court of the United States pursuant to the Original Jurisdiction Clause Article III, §2, ¶2 saying “In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls…the Supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction.”

No Indian tribe’s sovereignty received the Court’s Protection after 1871 although the constitutional question of and answer by the US Supreme Court prior to 1871 settled that the Treaty and Defence Clauses preclude the assumption the Commerce Clause jurisdiction To regulate Commerce with Indian tribes and foreign Nations really means To exercise “plenary power” i.e., sovereignty over Indian tribes and foreign Nations.”

The court record for the entire set of court systems sitting in North America remained a blank slate from 1871 until in United States v. Lara, 541 US 193, 214, 227 (2004), Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas out of the blue said:

In 1871, Congress enacted a statute [Appropriations Act of 1871] that purported to prohibit entering into treaties with the ‘Indian nation[s] or tribe[s].’ 16 Stat. 566, codified at 25 USC §71. Although this Act is constitutionally suspect (the Constitution vests in the President both the power to make treaties, Art. II, §2, cl. 2…), it nevertheless reflects the view of the political branches that the tribes had become a purely domestic matter. To be sure, this does not quite suffice to demonstrate that the tribes lost their sovereignty…Federal Indian policy is, to say the least, schizophrenic.…I believe we must examine more critically our tribal sovereignty case law. Both the Court and the dissent, however, compound the confusion by failing to undertake the necessary rigorous constitutional analysis. I would begin by carefully following our assumptions to their logical conclusions and by identifying the potential sources of federal power to modify tribal sovereignty …I do, however, agree that this case raises important constitutional questions that the Court does not begin to answer. The Court utterly fails to find any provision of the Constitution that gives Congress enumerated power to alter tribal sovereignty…I would be willing to revisit the question.

From 1871 through to 2004 this conflict of laws between the constitutional and the ordinary law went unnoticed in so far as the courts of North America are concerned. Of course, the Indians noticed it as did the settlers led by the lawyers, judges and police in the land rush into the Indian territories inaugurated by the ordinary legislation. The legal establishment preceded the settlers in order to open the registry offices to record the government grants to the settlers of the Indians’ lands. The lawyers certified titles to the private property created by the land grants.

The Indians who noticed themselves in the way of the crops, cows, sheep and fences,  of course, noticed the sudden absence of the constitutional protection formerly much promised by newcomer society from time out of mind. They knew the constitutions precluded entry of newcomers unto their land other than with their consent for the purpose of the mutually beneficial fur trade. The Indians were quite familiar with the newcomer government laws regulating this trade by prohibiting the newcomer traders selling alcohol or settling other than to the extent of fur trading posts agreeable to both cultures. Suddenly the fur trade was all but over and the lands were flooded with settlers.

Since the Indians had no money to speak of and since the Appropriations Act of 1871 and Indian Act of 1876 confiscated their lands and put in place of traditional Indian government, the government of the newcomers assisted by newcomer-created Indian band councils, the aboriginal government itself was confiscated along with the land it used to govern. Indians who went to lawyers were told they could either hang around town and beg or go to live on a reservation on some land the newcomer government could spare from settlement and live on handouts there. The aboriginal economy was dead as a means of survival. The lawyers were far too busy profiting from the conveyancing of Indian land to act on behalf of Indians to raise the constitutional question.

This went on the length and breadth of North America until 1972 when on February 11th five Indians came into my law office in Haileybury in northern Ontario, a town of three thousand people on the western shore of Lake Temiskaming. It’s a long narrow lake the center line of which defines the border between northern Ontario and northern Quebec. I’d been called to bar the year before and only just opened my office as a sole practitioner. The Indians were among my first clients. They hailed from Lake Temagami about forty five miles south west as the crow flies. Their lake was situate in the middle of the vast Temagami Forest Reserve of old growth white pines, sparkling rivers and crystal lakes. Their four thousand square mile ancestral homeland is about as close an approximation of the pre-Columbian natural order as exists in North America.

They complained to me that they’d just heard and read about an announcement by the government of Ontario that an 80 million dollar destination ski and summer holiday resort would be built on Maple Mountain, the 2nd highest elevation in Ontario and the crest of the height of land that defines the continental watershed between the waters flowing north to Hudson’s Bay from those flowing south to the Great Lakes St Lawrence drainage basin. What brought them out of the woodwork was the fact the resort was to be placed right at the highest point from the cave at which had emerged the mythic lynx and first people to inhabit the land exposed by the falling water level of the great flood.

Later anthropological and archeological research established a massive concentration of prehistoric rock pictographs throughout this region and unrivalled anywhere else. Similarly, linguistic analysis established this as the geographical centre of a dialectic chain of the Algonkian speaking linguistic family comprised of autonomous hunting bands organized in hereditary family fishing territories taking advantage of the finely networked riverine system that characterizes the northeastern North American woodlands. The waters were both the transportation highways and byways and the inexhaustible source of food complemented by hunting and gathering for variety. And, of course, some degree of quasi-cultivation in the sense of controlled burns that encouraged the important and reliable annual blueberry crops.

Adjacent bands were linked together to constitute the gene pool the minimum size of which has to be at least five hundred to avoid the complications of inbreeding. Also for political, commercial, religious and legal purposes were the aboriginal family, band, national and tribal entities closely linked and integrated by the water routes and intermarriage networks. Artifacts and natural products from one region in North America commonly turn up in the archeological record of the trade routes that the newcomers’ fur trade eventually was able to tap into and take advantage of, from the perspective of both cultures, at first, until the fur resource was depleted by over exploitation and the market collapsed as European fashion moved on from fur hats to the next fad and fashion. And then the settlement frontier leap-frogged the fur trade treaty frontier.

Quite early in my legal research prompted by the Indian clients from Bear Island in Lake Temagami I came across the rather famous Royal Proclamation of 1763. By no very great feat of scholarship I had learned by the summer of 1972 that it codified an agreement or consensus previously arrived at between all the European nations that had been involved in the great scramble to profit from “the discovery.” As early as 1493 the Catholic Church enacted ecclesiastical legislation that purported to bind Christian Europe as a matter of equity to respect Indian tribal sovereignty and exclusive possession to the extent of not just taking as if the right to do so were inherent, but instead to enter into treaties with the tribe, nation or band in occupation for the acquisition from it of the right to govern and possess.

Thus the papal bulla promulgated under reign of Pope Paul III and entitled Sublimis Dei of May 29, 1537 enacted:

To all faithful Christians to whom this writing may come, health in Christ our Lord and the apostolic benediction.

The sublime God so loved the human race that He created man in such wise that he might participate, not only in the good that other creatures enjoy, but endowed him with capacity to attain to the inaccessible and invisible Supreme Good and behold it face to face; and since man, according to the testimony of the sacred scriptures, has been created to enjoy eternal life and happiness, which none may obtain save through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, it is necessary that he should possess the nature and faculties enabling him to receive that faith; and that whoever is thus endowed should be capable of receiving that same faith. Nor is it credible that any one should possess so little understanding as to desire the faith and yet be destitute of the most necessary faculty to enable him to receive it. Hence Christ, who is the Truth itself, that has never failed and can never fail, said to the preachers of the faith whom He chose for that office “Go ye and teach all nations.” He said all, without exception, for all are capable of receiving the doctrines of the faith.

The enemy of the human race, who opposes all good deeds in order to bring men to destruction, beholding and envying this, invented a means never before heard of, by which he might hinder the preaching of God’s word of Salvation to the people: he inspired his satellites who, to please him, have not hesitated to publish abroad that the Indians of the West and the South, and other people of whom We have recent knowledge should be treated as dumb brutes created for our service, pretending that they are incapable of receiving the Catholic Faith.

We, who, though unworthy, exercise on earth the power of our Lord and seek with all our might to bring those sheep of His flock who are outside into the fold committed to our charge, consider, however, that the Indians are truly men and that they are not only capable of understanding the Catholic Faith but, according to our information, they desire exceedingly to receive it. Desiring to provide ample remedy for these evils, We define and declare by these Our letters, or by any translation thereof signed by any notary public and sealed with the seal of any ecclesiastical dignitary, to which the same credit shall be given as to the originals, that, notwithstanding whatever may have been or may be said to the contrary, the said Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the faith of Jesus Christ; and that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect.

By virtue of Our apostolic authority We define and declare by these present letters, or by any translation thereof signed by any notary public and sealed with the seal of any ecclesiastical dignitary, which shall thus command the same obedience as the originals, that the said Indians and other peoples should be converted to the faith of Jesus Christ by preaching the word of God and by the example of good and holy living.

This principle of equity was adopted as the positive constitutional law of each of the great maritime powers of Europe that took part in the New World adventure: France, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Russia, United Kingdom. And in due course it was saved and continued by their successors in North America Canada and the United States. That is why each of the those italicized names is identified as a defendant in the Case of Mahican Tribe and Rick Vanguilder and Mi’kmaq Tribe and Gary Metallic v. Canada, France, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Russia, United Kingdom and United States. That is the Case currently and criminally being stonewalled by William H. Suter, Clerk of the Supreme Court of the United States. It asks the constitutional question the answering of which by the Court will settle the matter Constitutional Democracy v. Unconstitutional Empire in favor of one or the other of those alternative modes of being.

In so far as British North America in particular is concerned, being the immediate predecessor to Canada and the United States of the preemptive right conferred by discovery to treat with the Indian aboriginal governments for the conveyance from them of their previously established jurisdiction and their Peoples’ corresponding possessory in the several hunting, fishing and gathering territories comprising the many ancestral homelands, as early as 1704 the Imperial Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (UK) in the reign of Queen Anne ruled, in the matter of Mohegan Indians v. Connecticut, that with regard to a constitutional question whether a newcomer government has yet acquired jurisdiction and power of disposition over real estate by treaty with the Indian government, that the Indian government is entitled to independent and impartial third-party adjudication.

The Mohegans petitioned Queen Anne in 1703 for appointment of such a third-party because they felt there was no point raising the constitutional question of Connecticut’s jurisdiction over a disputed tract in Connecticut’s court system, for the same reason Connecticut might be expected to be reticent to raise the question in the tribe’s court system. The Attorney General of the UK was commissioned to investigate the issue and in due course he recommended the commissioning of a Standing Committee of the Imperial Privy Council to serve as a trial level third-party adjudicator, subject to appeal ultimately to the Judicial Committee (UK) itself. This was adopted by the Queen and enacted into the colonial constitutional law by Royal Commission pursuant to the royal prerogative to legislate the colonial constitutional law, by means of this particular constitutional procedure. Connecticut repeatedly appealed over the course of the next seventy five years until, in 1775, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (UK), the Imperial Court of Last Resort affirmed the exclusive original jurisdiction as the independent and the impartial third-party adjudication of inter parties boundary disputes affecting competing sovereignties between crown governments, Indian tribes and/or foreign Nation or any combination thereof. The exclusive jurisdiction as third-party adjudicator of such disputes before 1789, as at 1789 devolved upon the Supreme Court of the United States pursuant to the constitution’s Original Jurisdiction Clause:

Article III, §2, ¶2 of the Constitution of the United States of America prevents any lapse of jurisdiction by saving and continuing the independent and impartial third-party jurisdiction formerly vested in the Judicial Committee in the Supreme Court of the United States. It enacts, “In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.”

This is the Article of the constitution upon which Rick Vanguilder and Gary Metallic rely to invoke the Court’s third-party jurisdiction to answer the constitutional question of jurisdiction law alone of competing sovereignties between constitutional governments, Indian tribes and foreign Nations. The case of Mahican Tribe and Rick Vanguilder and Mi’kmaq Tribe and Gary Metallic v. Canada, France, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Russia, United Kingdom and United States is currently left standing outside the Courthouse door by the Clerk of the Supreme Court Clerk’s chicanery. The legal consequence of the chicanery is that the US Supreme Court in consequence unconstitutionally is denied its right, jurisdiction and judicial duty to vindicate Constitutional Democracy in the case of Constitutional Democracy v. Unconstitutional Empire. Of record as: Mahican Tribe and Rick Vanguilder and Mi’kmaq Tribe and Gary Metallic v. Canada, France, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Russia, United Kingdom and United States.

Gary and Rick attest in the US Supreme Court documents they are ambassadors and public ministers duly appointed in the tribal way to deal with the newcomer governments and Peoples by means of raising the constitutional question of the conflict between the constitutions of the named defendants, on the one hand, and on the other the Appropriations Act of 1871 and Indian Act of 1876.

Since those two ordinary statutes are the basis of the federal Indian law that ostensibly, although allegedly unconstitutionally, governs the relationship for legal purposes between natives and newcomers, therefore the constitutional question really means turning back the clock one hundred forty years to a time when it was well understood by everybody that newcomer jurisdiction and possession was contingent upon proof of purchase.

Specifically, by production and filing in court of a certified copy of the Indian Treaty duly registered in a land registry or land titles office and establishing proof of purchase. Such land records relative to New York and Massachusetts where the historical events relevant to the case of Mahican Tribe and Rick Vanguilder and Mi’kmaq Tribe and Gary Metallic v. Canada, France, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Russia, United Kingdom and United States took place.

The land records were governed in each of those regions at all material times by one of two pieces of ordinary legislation enacted in compliance with the governing constitutional law. These are from New York and Massachusetts but the same law as identified there applies in all jurisdictions of the United States and Canada:

An Act concerning purchases of lands from the Indians, Stat. Prov. NY 1684, c. 9. Bee itt Enacted by this Gen’ll Assembly and by the authority of the same that from henceforward noe Purchase of Lands from the Indians shall be deemed a good Title without Leave first had and obtaineid from the Governor signified by a Warrant under his hand and Seale and entered on Record in the Secretaries office att New Yorke and Satisfaction for the said Purchase acknowlidged by the Indians from whome the Purchase was made is to bee Recorded likewise which Purchase soe made and prosecuted and entered on Record in the office aforesaid shall from that time be Vallid to all intents and purposes.

An Act to prevent and make void clandestine and illegal purchases of lands from the Indians, Stat. Prov. Mass. Bay 1701-02, c. 11. WHEREAS the government of the late colonys of the Massachusetts Bay and New Plymouth, to the intent the native Indians might not be injured or defeated of their just rights and possessions, or be imposed on and abused in selling and disposing of their lands, and thereby deprive themselves of such places as were suitable for their settlement and improvements, did, by an act and law named in the said colonys respectively many years since, inhibit and forbid all persons purchasing any land of the Indians without the licence and approbation of the general court, notwithstanding which, sundry persons for private lucre have presumed to make purchases of lands from the Indians, not having any license or approbation as aforesaid for the same, to the injury of the natives, and great disquiet and disturbance of many of the inhabitants of this province in the peaceable possession of their lands and inheritances lawfully acquired; therefore, for the vacating of such illegal purchases, and preventing of the like for the future,—Be it enacted and declared by the Lieutenant-Governor, Council and Representatives in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same,
(1). That all deeds of bargain, sale, lease, release or quit-claim, titles and conveyances whatsoever, of any lands, tenements or hereditaments within this province, as well for term of years as forever, had, made, gotten, procured or obtained from any Indian or Indians by any person or persons whatsoever, at any time or times since the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred thirty-three, without the license or approbation of the respective general courts of the said late colonys in which such lands, tenements or hereditaments lay, and all deeds of bargain and sale, titles and conveyances whatsoever, of any lands, tenements or hereditaments within this province, that since the establishment of the present government have been or shall hereafter be had, made, gotten, obtained or procured from any Indian or Indians, by any person or persons whatsoever, without the licence, approbation and allowance of the great and general court or assembly of this province for the same, shall be deemed and adjudged in the law to be null, void and of none effect: provided, nevertheless,—…
(4). That if any person or persons whatsoever shall, after the publication of this act, presume to make any purchase or obtain any title from any Indian or Indians for any lands, tenements or hereditaments within this province, contrary to the true intent and meaning of this act, such person or persons so offending, and being thereof duly convicted in any of his majestie’s courts of record within this province, shall be punished by fine and imprisonment, at the discretion of the court where the conviction shall be, not exceeding double the value of the land so purchased, nor exceeding six months’ imprisonment.
(5). That all leases of land that shall at any time hereafter be made by any Indian or Indians for any term of years, shall be utterly void and of none effect, unless the same shall be made by and with licence first had and obtained from the court of general sessions of the peace in the county where such lands lye: provided nevertheless, that nothing in this act shall be taken, held or deemed in any wise to hinder, defeat or make void any bargain, sale or lease of land made by one Indian to another Indian or Indians.

Those two colonial statutes are the template for all the colonies and their successors — the States of the United States and the Provinces of Canada. All are based upon and in compliance with the colonial constitutional law eventually codified and reiterated by the first and only omnibus constitution applicable to all of British North America, superseding the same message previously expressed in the governor’s royal commissions and royal instructions for the governance of the several colonial governments, the Royal Proclamation of 1763. It enacted:

[Preamble] And whereas it is just and reasonable, and essential to our Interest, and the Security of our Colonies, that the several Nations or Tribes of Indians with whom We are connected, and who live under our Protection, should not be molested or disturbed in the Possession of such Parts of Our Dominions and Territories as, not having been ceded to or purchased by Us, are reserved to them, or any of them, as their Hunting Grounds—We do therefore, with the Advice of our Privy Council, declare it to be our Royal Will and Pleasure, that…
[1] no Governor or Commander in Chief…do presume, upon any Pretence whatever, to grant Warrants of Survey, or pass any Patents…upon any Lands whatever, which, not having been ceded to or purchased by Us as aforesaid, are reserved to the said Indians, or any of them.
[2] And We do further declare it to be Our Royal Will and Pleasure, for the present as aforesaid, to reserve under our Sovereignty, Protection, and Dominion, for the use of the said Indians, all the Lands and Territories not included within the Limits of Our said Three new Governments [Quebec, East Florida, West Florida], or within the Limits of the Territory granted to the Hudson’s Bay Company, as also all the Lands and Territories lying to the Westward of the Sources of the Rivers which fall into the Sea from the West and North West as aforesaid [i.e., all of British North America howsoever politically organized].
[2] And We do hereby strictly forbid, on Pain of our Displeasure, all our loving Subjects from making any Purchases or Settlements whatever, or taking Possession of any of the Lands above reserved without our especial leave and Licence for that Purpose first obtained.
[3] And We do further strictly enjoin and require all Persons whatever who have either wilfully or inadvertently seated themselves upon any Lands within the Countries above described or upon any other Lands which, not having been ceded to or purchased by Us, are still reserved to the said Indians as aforesaid, forthwith to remove themselves from such Settlements.
[4] And whereas great Frauds and Abuses have been committed in purchasing Lands of the Indians, to the great Prejudice of our Interests, and to the great Dissatisfaction of the said Indians: In order, therefore, to prevent such Irregularities for the future, and to the end that the Indians may be convinced of our Justice and determined Resolution to remove all reasonable Cause of Discontent, We do, with the Advice of our Privy Council strictly enjoin and require that no private Person do presume to make any purchase from the said Indians of any Lands reserved to the said Indians, within those parts of our Colonies where We have thought proper to allow Settlement: but that, if at any Time any of the Said Indians should be inclined to dispose of the said Lands, the same shall be Purchased only for Us, in our Name, at some public Meeting or Assembly of the said Indians, to be held for that Purpose by the Governor or Commander in Chief of our Colony respectively within which they shall lie.
[5] And we do by the Advice of our Privy Council, declare and enjoin, that the Trade with the said Indians shall be free and open to all our Subjects whatever. provided that every Person who may incline to Trade with the said Indians do take out a Licence for carrying on such Trade from the Governor or Commander in Chief of any of our Colonies respectively where such Person shall reside. and also give Security to observe such Regulations as We shall at any Time think fit. by ourselves or by our Commissaries to be appointed for this Purpose, to direct and appoint for the Benefit of the said Trade:
[6] And we do hereby authorize, enjoin, and require the Governors and Commanders in Chief of all our Colonies respectively, as well those under Our immediate Government as those under the Government and Direction of Proprietaries, to grant such Licences without Fee or Reward, taking especial Care to insert therein a Condition, that such Licence shall be void, and the Security forfeited in case the Person to whom the same is granted shall refuse or neglect to observe such Regulations as We shall think proper to prescribe as aforesaid.
[7] And we do further expressly conjoin and require all Officers whatever, as well Military as those Employed in the Management and Direction of Indian Affairs, within the Territories reserved as aforesaid for the use of the said Indians, to seize and apprehend all Persons whatever, who, standing charged with Treason, Misprisions of Treason, Murders, or other Felonies or Misdemeanors shall fly from Justice and take Refuge in the said Territory. And to send them under a proper guard to the Colony where the Crime was committed of which they stand accused, in order to take their Trial for the same.

The drafters of the Royal Proclamation of 1763 were quite superb at their job. They well understood the insidious political temptation under which the governors and the governments under them had to labor, so far from the mother country and exposed to the blandishments of the local gentry, land speculators, businessmen and settlers, all champing at the bit to get into constitutionally off-limits Indian territories. The proclamation heads off the lure of non-compliance in no uncertain terms, making it punishable without proof of guilty intent as “Misprision of Treason,” an absolute offence equivalent to a high contempt of court or treasonable act against the person of the monarch or counseling war upon the Crown’s dominions or home country.

Anyone doing any of the prohibited acts was to be hunted down and returned from the Indian territories if found there, to stand trial in whatever colony the crime had occurred in. This transportation for trial was, of course, necessary since the colonial courts had no jurisdiction in the Indian territories, since those territories remain under the exclusive jurisdiction of the original Indian tribal governments and courts. Until such time as the tribe should contract by Treaty agree to relinquish its territorial sovereignty and possession.

The proclamation anticipated “Pretence” and “Fraud” and “Abuse” in places both high and low in order to get at the Indians’ lands and resources without compliance with the constitutional law. That is why the breach of it was constituted a crime tantamount to treason but easier to prove than treason, since “Misprision” renders the “Treason” punishable upon mere proof of the prohibited act, whether it be an authorized grant of land patent by the Governor or Commander in Chief or the poorer farmer crossing the Treaty Frontier with a little herd of sheep to graze. The defence of ‘Who me?’ or ‘I got lost!’ or any such other thing going to the absence of criminal intent was not arguable.

That is very essence of the legal device of the Royal Proclamation. That rarely employed and peculiar kind of law is published and nailed up on every court house door and every political chamber. It is quite literally “proclaimed” throughout the land much in the same way as in pre-literate England a Town Crier would cry out the message all around each town and village before nailing it with its big red seal in some prominent public place, to remind all and sundry of the law of which all persons in the realm irrebutably are presumed by operation of law alone to have had actual notice.

This is law that section 109 of the Canadian constitution in 1867 saved and continued as the supreme law constitutionally protecting the Indian tribal sovereignty and possession pending treaty when it enacted that the constitutional delegation to the Provinces of Canada of jurisdiction over “Property and Civil Rights” is subject to the Indians’ previously established constitutional “Interest,” rather than the other way round. Thus in 1875 the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada filed a Report in the Privy Council (Canada) recommending the Public Lands Act of British Columbia be disallowed on the ground of conflict with the Royal Proclamation of 1763 in so much as it purported to have dispositive power over Indian lands for which no Indian Treaty surrendering Indian sovereignty and possession had been registered. That is, the province was asserting original as opposed to derivative jurisdiction to grant lands within the geographical boundary of the province regardless of the Treaty Frontier. The Minister’s recommendation was adopted by the Privy Council by Minute in Council which then in turn was signed and sealed into law by the Governor General of Canada. The Report was as follows:

Canada Minute in Council of 23 January 1875. The 40th article of the treaty of Capitulation of Montreal, dated 8th September 1760, is to the effect that: “The Savages or Indian allies of His Most Christian Majesty shall be maintained in the lands they inhabit if they choose to remain there.” The Proclamation of King George III 1763 [enacts] “…such parts of our dominions and territories, as not having been purchased by Us, are reserved to them, or any of them as their hunting grounds;…or upon any lands whatever, which not having been ceded to or purchased by us, as aforesaid, are reserved to the said Indians, or any of them…And we do further strictly enjoin and require all persons whatsoever, who may have either wilfully or inadvertently seated themselves upon any lands within the Countries above described, or upon any other lands, which not having been ceded to or purchased by us, are reserved to the said Indians as aforesaid, forthwith to remove themselves from such settlements…” The Undersigned would also refer to the BNA [British North America] Act 1867 Sec. 109, applicable to British Columbia, which enacts that, all lands belonging to the Province shall, belong to the Province “subject to any trust existing in respect thereof, and to any interest other than the Province in the same.” The Undersigned [Minister of Justice for Canada], therefore, feels it incumbent upon him to recommend that this Act [the British Columbia Public Lands Act] be disallowed [as unconstitutional in virtue of purporting to apply to Hunting Grounds reserved for the Indians].

The Minute in Council was not, in fact, implemented. Instead, in a complete about face the government of Canada the following year chose instead to ignore section 109 of the constitution constituting that government subject to section 109. Rather than respect the proclamation the Prime Minister who at one time was also Superintendent of Indian Affairs led his colleagues into passing the Indian Act of 1876 which itself was modeled upon the American Appropriations Act of 1871.

The Indian Act provided that the only Indians with legal status are those individuals who are listed on the band lists maintained by the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. Bands are defined as bodies politic incorporated pursuant to the Indian Act and exercising the municipal powers (dog bylaws, garbage collection and so on) authorized under that statute and approved by the Superintendent of Indian Affairs who has discretionary power to disallow any band council resolution.

As under the Appropriations Act of 1871 the Indian Act of 1876 introduced a regime of federal law profoundly in conflict with the previously established constitutional law.

This, of course, was and remains unquestionably unconstitutional. In rule of law theory all the Indian tribes had to do to protect their sovereignty and possession from this usurpation and dispossession was to deliver a Notice of Constitutional Question requiring the Court to answer by declaring the Appropriations Act of 1871 the Indian Act of 1876 null and void.

That is easier said than done. In complementary ordinary legislation it became a criminal offence for a lawyer to represent Indians without the consent in writing of the Superintendent. Not that any lawyers applied. The profession was too busy doing the land deals in consequence of the unconstitutional dismantling of the Treaty Frontier Wall. It is very hard for a lawyer to break ranks with his profession. Especially since the members of the bench are drawn from it.

Not only was it hard, but pragmatically it was impossible. The clerks of the courts who are appointed to office and subject to removal from office by the judges of each court were — and are — under permanent instructions to reject any document filed by or on behalf of an Indian tribe claiming constitutional protection for its sovereignty and possession. No Indian accused of a criminal offence could, or can, get heard in court to raise the constitutional defence of tribal sovereignty.

Prior to 1871 Indian tribal sovereignty was a commonly referenced topic in hundreds of recorded court cases. After 1871 there are no references. The previously established judicial confirmations of the constitutional law in every generation since 1789 suddenly stopped. The Indian tribal sovereignty court record from 1871 to 2004 is a blank slate.

This is not surprising given that access to the civil courts is barred by the court clerks who refuse to permit the filing of the constitutional question and of the criminal court judges who cannot see or hear the issue. The question is not a part of any court record or reasons for judgment because the legal profession and judiciary do not permit it.

Prior to 1871 everybody, and not only lawyers and judges, knew perfectly well the federal government has jurisdiction to regulate the Indian trade pursuant to the commerce clause subject to the treaty and defence clauses that protect the tribes from invasion, occupation, usurpation and dispossession “on any Pretence whatever.”

What the constitutions attempted to do but did not succeed in doing was to guard against the counter-revolution that eventually did overthrow Constitutional Democracy and replace it with Unconstitutional Empire. The counter-revolution was created and implemented from within the society rather than from the outside. The constitutions placed their People’s trust in the guardianship of the legal profession and the judicial branch of government.

Theirs was duty to implement the rule of law specifically by upholding the principle of the supremacy of the constitution upon which the existence of Constitutional Democracy entirely depends.

The framers of the constitutions, the same as the drafters of the Royal Proclamation of 1763, were not wet behind the ears. They knew of the proclivity of governments to exceed and abuse the powers entrusted to them and they sought to forestall the risk by putting the court system in the position of guardianship of the public trust to safeguard Constitutional Democracy. After all if you can’t trust the judges, who can you trust?

For the past forty years I have been persisting in trying to get into courts, on behalf of Indian tribal governments, the constitutional question of the conflict of laws between the constitutions’ amendment, commerce, defence, judicial oath respecting the supremacy of the constitution and treaty clauses and their interpretive precedents on the one hand, and on the other the federal Indian law introduced by the Appropriations Act of 1871 and the Indian Act of 1876.

In 1999 a judge convicted me of criminal contempt of court and in due course I was disbarred as a convicted criminal from practicing with regard to the law of Ontario, on the basis of the bare faced lie that every judge before whom I had raised the question carefully and patiently had addressed it and discounted it with cogent reasons for judgment. If that were true, there necessarily would be a court record to prove it. Not that the law of Ontario is relevant other than that it is one of the many bodies of law that unconstitutionally is applied in criminal willful blindness by the courts of the Canada, France, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Russia, United Kingdom and United States.

The crimes go beyond mere ‘Misprision of Treason” and most importantly today consist in war and genocide, the prevention of which is the objective of the case of Constitutional Democracy v. Unconstitutional Empire carriage of which now has been picked up by the case of Mahican Tribe and Rick Vanguilder and Mi’kmaq Tribe and Gary Metallic v. Canada, France, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Russia, United Kingdom and United States.

What that case does is present an answer to the same old constitutional question that the legal system of the Unconstitutional Empire of the responding nations, with the cooperation of the International Court of Justice, International Criminal Court, Human Rights Committee of the United Nations and Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (UK), have managed successfully to make invisible and unheard-able ever since 1871.

Suddenly, in 2004 US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas took judicial notice, on his own motion, for the Court to address the manifestly unconstitutional status of the Appropriations Act of 1871 and the Indian Act of 1876 in the light of the Commerce, Treaty and Defence Clause precedents read as a set. This was the first time in 133 years that a North American judge opened his eyes to see the conflict and, therefore, the urgency of the Court answering the constitutional question of jurisdictional law alone of Indian tribal sovereignty.

He did this on his own initiative, since the system is set up to block litigants who raise the question from reaching the Judges. Out of the blue Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Case of United States v. Lara, 541 US 193, 214, 227 (2004) said in compliance with the Judicial Oath Clause Article VI ¶3 :

In 1871, Congress enacted a statute [Appropriations Act of 1871] that purported to prohibit entering into treaties with the ‘Indian nation[s] or tribe[s].’ 16 Stat. 566, codified at 25 USC §71. Although this Act is constitutionally suspect (the Constitution vests in the President both the power to make treaties, Art. II, §2, cl. 2…), it nevertheless reflects the view of the political branches that the tribes had become a purely domestic matter. To be sure, this does not quite suffice to demonstrate that the tribes lost their sovereignty…Federal Indian policy is, to say the least, schizophrenic.…I believe we must examine more critically our tribal sovereignty case law. Both the Court and the dissent, however, compound the confusion by failing to undertake the necessary rigorous constitutional analysis. I would begin by carefully following our assumptions to their logical conclusions and by identifying the potential sources of federal power to modify tribal sovereignty …I do, however, agree that this case raises important constitutional questions that the Court does not begin to answer. The Court utterly fails to find any provision of the Constitution that gives Congress enumerated power to alter tribal sovereignty…I would be willing to revisit the question.

Well, the cat is out of the bag. No way does she want to be jammed back in there. William K. Suter, Clerk of the Supreme Court of the United States, is doing his level best to serve as the Honorable Cat Catcher to the Unconstitutional Empire. Suter has refused to let Gary and Rick file thec case of Mahican Tribe and Rick Vanguilder and Mi’kmaq Tribe and Gary Metallic v. Canada, France, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Russia, United Kingdom and United States. Suter’s ground of refusal is, the federal legislation whose constitutionality itself is in question does not allow constitutional challenges to itself. And that is where the matter presently stands. To all intents and purposes the cat is back in the bag, notwithstanding Justice Thomas. The most recent of the very many painful attempts to escape the prison built and maintained by the judicial branch of the Unconstitutional Empire to contain and restrain the constitutional question is the following letter to each of the individual Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States:

Despite opposition from the imperialist countries led by the US, the 2001 WCAR became a flashpoint for focusing international attention on two issues: reparations for slavery and the liberation of Palestine. It involved a convergence of several events: the official meeting of member states that adopted the DDPA; the NGO Forum that approved a substantially stronger document (the WCAR NGO Forum Declaration); a two-day general strike led by COSATU against the privatization of social services in South Africa/Azania; and daily protest marches outside the conference venue regarding land reform, Palestine, and reparations. The government meeting was marked by a walkout of the US, Canadian, and Israeli delegations.

A 2009 review conference took place in Geneva, Switzerland following the 2001 WCAR and reaffirmed the DDPA. The US, Canada, Israel, and seven other rich countries boycotted this meeting as well.

Now, ten years after the Durban conference, delegates representing the member states of the UN will discuss the DDPA again – this time in Midtown Manhattan. The Obama administration, along with the governments of Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Israel, Italy, and the Netherlands, have already announced plans to boycott the gathering. Combined with this boycott, the lackeys and mouthpieces of the US ruling class are already working to derail the conference with false charges of anti-Semitism and jingoistic references to the 9/11 attacks (see for example the 6/3 New York Daily News editorial “President Obama must organize an international boycott of obscene, anti-Semitic Durban III confab” which contains blatant falsehoods about the content of the DDPA).

Why Is the US Empire So Afraid?

The Obama administration’s decision to boycott the September 2011 conference in NYC was announced in a June letter from Joseph E. Macmanus, acting U.S. assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs, addressed to some members of Congress. The letter claimed that the US was boycotting, because the Durban and follow-up conferences have “included ugly displays of intolerance and anti-Semitism.”

Two years ago, the Obama administration released a more detailed press statement regarding its decision to boycott the 2009 review conference in Geneva. Titled “U.S. Posture Toward the Durban Review Conference and Participation in the UN Human Rights Council,” the statement opposed the reaffirmation of the DDPA and outlined the conditions for a document that would be tolerable to the US:

It must not single out any one country or conflict, nor embrace the troubling concept of “defamation of religion.” The U.S. also believes an acceptable document should not go further than the DDPA on the issue of reparations for slavery.

The Obama administration’s reasons for boycotting the September 2011 conference in NYC and the 2009 review conference in Geneva are pretenses for shutting down criticism of Israel. Out of 341 paragraphs, the DDPA contains four paragraphs on Palestine, hardly any “singling out” of the Zionist entity. To protect its attack dog in the Middle East, the US is once again resorting to the usual tactic of equating criticisms of Israeli settler-colonialism with anti-Semitism.

The Obama administration’s non-participation is not surprising or exceptional. It exposes the fact that this administration continues to carry out the strategic interests of the US ruling class in maintaining white supremacist national oppression inside the Empire and in dominating the people of the world.

The Bush administration deliberately sent a low-level delegation to the 2001 WCAR, which did not include secretary of state Colin Powell, and then recalled it in the middle of the conference. During the Carter and Reagan administrations respectively, the US boycotted the 1978 and 1983 World Conferences to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination in Geneva, where UN member states condemned apartheid in South Africa/Azania as a crime against humanity and denounced Israel’s collaborative relationship with the apartheid regime.

Why is the US Empire so afraid of participating in UN-sponsored conferences on racism and racial discrimination? While the one-country-one-vote forum of the UN General Assembly is certainly more difficult to control than the UN Security Council or an exclusive gathering of the imperialist countries, most of the countries in the General Assembly are neocolonial states, run by local elites that play varying roles in administering imperialist relations. Thus, why does the US have such a record of non-participation?

First, there exist real contradictions in foreign policy between the US ruling class and certain dependent countries, even while the latter do not break fundamentally with the imperialist system and are not reliable allies of the peoples’ movements. Second, each of these UN-sponsored gatherings is a forum for shaping the views of people around the world, where peoples’ movements have the opportunity to influence international public opinion through militant street mobilizations outside conference venues.

Both of these factors contribute to the possibility of embarrassment and isolation at any UN function for the US ruling class, which sits at the head of a country with racism in its DNA. To paraphrase Mao, here is one arena where it is not the people who fear US imperialism, but it is US imperialism that fears the people of the world.

A Hard Look at the Text of the DDPA

The DDPA is not legally binding or enforceable under international law. It derives its authority from moral recognition and the commitment of UN member states to implement its provisions. As such, the struggle over the DDPA’s language is primarily an ideological struggle over how to understand history and our present conditions. Viewed in this way, it is a compromised text. The DDPA contains a few provisions that could be advances in the fight against racism if seized by the peoples’ movements, but embodies a capitulation to the imperialist countries in some other important ways.

The most important advance made in the text is the acknowledgement in Paragraph 13 that “slavery and the slave trade are a crime against humanity and should always have been so, especially the transatlantic slave trade.” The term “crime against humanity” carries weight under international law and the recognition of slavery as such may have given a boost to reparations litigation. Yet, at the same time, the DDPA does not contain any language advocating reparations for slavery. It only expresses profound “regret” for slavery and states in Paragraph 100 that “some States have taken the initiative to apologize and have paid reparation, where appropriate, for grave and massive violations committed.” Beyond that, there are only general provisions discussing the right of all victims of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance to seek “just and adequate reparation.” Furthermore, the DDPA fails to similarly characterize colonialism as a “crime against humanity.” There is much further to push.

The four paragraphs discussing Palestine in the DDPA are even more timid. Paragraph 65 discussing the right of refugees to return voluntarily to their homes and properties provides no indication that it is addressing Palestinian refugees in particular. This should be contrasted with the declaration and programme of action adopted at the 1978 World Conference to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination which referred explicitly to the Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe” – the name given to the 1948 mass expulsion): “the cruel tragedy which befell the Palestinian people 30 years ago and which the[y] continue to endure today – manifested in their being prevented from exercising their right to self-determination on the soil of their homeland, in the dispersal of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, the prevention of their return to their homes, and the establishment therein of settlers from abroad.”

The leading provision Paragraph 63 simultaneously recognizes the Palestinian right to self-determination and to the establishment of an independent state alongside “the right to security for all States in the region, including Israel.” The previous declarations and programmes of action adopted at the 1978 and 1983 World Conferences to Combat Racism did not condition the Palestinian right to self-determination on Israel’s security. In that respect, the DDPA is a step backward. Further, note that the text discusses the right of States to “security,” not people or populations, in effect codifying the existing states in the region. This is a predictable gesture in a document adopted by the UN member states, yet ironic in light of the North African and Arab democratic revolts. Finally, of course, UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, which correctly identified Zionism as a form of racism and remained in place from 1975 to 1991, continues to set the bar in the struggle within the UN over the proper characterization of Israeli settler-colonialism and its ideology.

Build the People’s Movements; Isolate the US Imperialists

As September 22 approaches, working and oppressed people in the US Empire can draw lessons from past historic campaigns to bring the crimes of the US ruling classes before the UN. In 1951, Paul Robeson and William L. Patterson presented a petition to UN officials titled “We Charge Genocide” condemning the oppression of Black people in the US, reflected in the widespread practice of lynching. Malcolm X would again raise the call during the 1960s for Black people to use the UN as a forum to expose their oppression in the US. In 1970, the Young Lords and the Puerto Rican Student Union organized a march of 10,000 people to the UN demanding independence for Puerto Rico, the release of political prisoners, and an end to police violence. In 1979, the National Black Human Rights Coalition organized a 5,000-strong march to the UN, with the slogans “Black People Charge Genocide” and “Human Rights is the Right to Self-Determination.” There should be a renewed focus today on the UN as an important site of struggle for working and oppressed people in the US.

COSATU’s two-day general strike against neoliberal policies on the eve of the 2001 WCAR in Durban provides a powerful example of how peoples’ movements can utilize such international gatherings to their advantage. The September 22 meeting is taking place not only in the country that is the home base of the Empire, but in the city that is the heart of US finance capital. It is crucial for all working and oppressed people to mobilize for the Durban + 10 Coalition activities from September 18 through 22, especially any protest marches that are planned.

The movement for reparations in the US can broaden and deepen its forces by highlighting the survivals of slavery in the foundations of US society today and the failure of Reconstruction to fully uproot them. Mass incarceration. Racist policing. Schools that operate like jails. Disproportionate unemployment. Enduring Black poverty throughout the country and in the Black Belt south.

In the weeks leading up to the conference and during the days of scheduled activity, we must make clear that reparations for slavery, as well as one hundred years of semi-slave sharecropping and national oppression that continues to this day, is a just demand that exposes the true character of the US Empire. It is a demand that is central to the liberation of the Black nation and the right of Black people to self-determination everywhere. It is a demand for the global redistribution of wealth stolen by the Empire. Without it, socialism is impossible.

The visit was organised by the Anglo Israel Association, whose honorary president is the Israeli Ambassador. The Anglo Israel Association boast that their most fruitful work is as propagandists for Israel bringing ‘opinion formers’ to the UK on speaking tours in partnership with British think-tanks and universities to push the Israeli perspective.

Benny Morris is well known for his racist views of Arabs and Muslims, his support and whitewashing of ethnic cleansing and his justification of genocide.

Justifying Genocide

US soldiers pose over a mass grave with some 300 bodies of innocent Native American Lakota Sioux, two-thirds women and children, massacred at Wounded Knee, Pine Ridge Reservation in 1891.

One of the few survivors of the massacre was a baby girl, found 4 days after the massacre, lying beneath her mothers dead frozen body, her mother having protected her in death as she had in life. The baby girl having survived the massacre and blizzard with temperatures 40 below zero, was then abducted by US Brigadier General Colby as a trophy of the massacre, in his own words “a most interesting Indian relic”.

Every single state in the United States had in place a scalp bounty law that would stipulate the fee the state would pay for the murder of an Indian, any Indian — it didn’t matter, it was a clear policy of genocide. The payment scale was graduated with the murder of an adult male Indian achieving the highest reward, but even murdering a baby Indian would secure a good reward.

Between Columbus’s arrival in 1492 and the massacre at wounded knee in 1891, 98% of the Indigenous population had been wiped out and 97.5% of their land had been stolen.

In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haartez in 2004, Benny Morris justifies this crime against humanity saying that “the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians. There are cases in which the overall, final good justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the course of history.”

Whitewashing Ethnic Cleansing

Unlike some Zionists, Benny Morris doesn’t deny Israel’s crimes of ethnic cleansing, rape, and murder of Palestinian people in 1948 to facilitate the founding of the Jewish state, rather he justifies the countless massacres, rape and the forced expulsion of over 750,000 Palestinians from their homes, the destruction of over 500 Palestinian towns and villages, resulting today in more than 7 million Palestinian refugees.

He justifies it as a means to an end, he says, “Under some circumstances expulsion is not a war crime. I don’t think that the expulsions of 1948 were war crimes. You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. You have to dirty your hands.”¹

On 9th April 1948 soldiers of the Irgun, a Zionist terror group, commanded by Menachem Begin, entered the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin. They slaughtered 250-300 men, women and children in cold blood. Their bodies were purposely mutilated to terrorise other Palestinians into fleeing their homes before they suffered similar massacres.
The Irgun, having proved itself, became part of the Israeli army. And its leader Menachem Begin went on to become the Prime Minister of Israel.

“peanuts” — Benny Morris’s description of massacres like Deir Yassin

Benny Morris describes such massacres as “peanuts” and “chicken feed” insisting that when compared to other massacres in history “we behaved very well.”

In fact he says Ben Gurion didn’t go far enough:

I think he made a serious historical mistake in 1948… he got cold feet… if he was already engaged in expulsion, maybe he should have done a complete job… my feeling is that this place would be quieter and know less suffering if the matter had been resolved once and for all. If Ben Gurion had carried out a large expulsion and cleansed the whole country — the whole land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River.

To this day the relentless quest to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from the land between the River Jordan and the Sea is still going on. Only now it is less ‘noticeable’ to the outside world, with coded terms such as ‘transfer’ and creating of ‘security zones’ being used to mean ethnic cleansing.

But this isn’t enough for Benny Morris, he proposes that in the future Arab citizens of Israel will also need to be ethnically cleansed because they have more children than Jewish citizens and their numbers will become an existential threat to the Jewish state. He says,

acts of expulsion will be entirely reasonable. They may even be essential. The Israeli Arabs are a time bomb… emissary of the enemy that is amongst us… a potential fifth column. In both demographic and security terms they are liable to undermine the state. So that if Israel again finds itself in a situation of existential threat, as in 1948, it may be forced to act as it did then.

Racism

Benny Morris compares the Palestinians to wild animals that need to be caged, he says, “Something like a cage has to be built for them. I know that sounds terrible. It is really cruel. But there is no choice. There is a wild animal there that has to be locked up in one way or another.”

In February 2010 the Cambridge University Israel Society cancelled Benny Morris’s scheduled talk and issued a statement saying that they “apologise for any unintended offence.. We want to clarify that the intention of the Israel Society was never to give racism a platform”

The LSE’s Shame

But it seems unlike Cambridge, the London School of Economics, shamefully are happy to invite and give centre stage to a racist. And what’s more the LSE awarded those attending the talk with credits that count towards the CDP Continuing Professional Development Certification which is a requirement of Government, professional and trade institutions. Apparently they see attendance of Benny Morris’s talk as a way of fulfilling your professional requirements of updating your skills and knowledge.

The security arrangements were unprecedented for what was after all a public lecture by a historian promoting his book. Attendees had to pre-register days in advance of the event, providing personal details including their address and then if they qualified for a ticket, on the day they had to bring a photo id like a passport or driving licence before they would be allowed in. The actual venue for the event was kept secret until 24 hours beforehand. Bags were strictly banned, and handbags and coats were searched before entry.

Activists had made the decision before hand that they would allow Benny Morris to speak uninterrupted. There was a silent protest inside the hall with people walking out with stickers over their mouths reading “Morris is a racist”.
Many people who were not part of any protest also just walked out, they had had enough of Morris’s opinions presented as history.

Security paranoia continued to the end of the talk when the audience were kept kettled inside the hall whilst Benny Morris was escorted out of the hall and out of the LSE.

In Benny Morris’s own words: “I was ushered by the security team down an elevator and through a narrow basement passage full of kitchen stores and out a side entrance.”

These ridiculous security arrangements can only be interpreted as indicative of the unpopularity of LSE’s decision to bend to Zionist pressure and promote hate speech on campus.

It seems Benny Morris has a neurosis when it comes to Muslims, he has said for Muslims “human life doesn’t have the same value as it does in the West” and sees Muslims living in the West as “creating a dangerous internal threat.”

His racism and islamophobia distorts his perception of everyday reality. He sees ‘Muslims under the bed’ everywhere. For example he describes his encounter outside the LSE as a “mob of some dozen Muslims, Arabs and their supporters.. surrounded me.. raucously harangued and bated me… Several spoke in broken, obviously newly acquired, English. Violence was thick in the air… Passersby looked on in astonishment, and perhaps shame, but it seemed the sight of angry bearded, caftaned Muslims was sufficient to deter any intervention. To me, it felt like Brownshirts in a street scene in 1920s Berlin… Uncurbed, Muslim intimidation in the public domain of people they see as disagreeing with them is palpable and palpably affecting the British Christian majority among whom they live, indeed, cowing them into silence. One senses real fear…”

As the video evidence shows, this is a total figment of his imagination, unfortunately such fabrications are not restricted to his personal encounters and cloud his whole work as a historian.

Is that really what happened?

A week after the encounter with human rights activists outside the LSE Benny Morris wrote an article for The National Interest (20 June 2011) in which he described what happened in the following words:

“mob of some dozen Muslims, Arabs and their supporters.. surrounded me..”

What mob? Do you see a dozen Muslims? Do you see any dozen people?
“raucously harangued and bated me..”

Watch the video, they were talking to you. At one stage you even asked them a question “Have you read my books?” to which they replied “Yes, we have…”

the two women on the left are part of Benny Morris’s entourage, the two men on the right are human rights activists

“Several spoke in broken, obviously newly acquired, English.”

Broken English? Not that it matters, but watch the video you will hear the activists spoke in clear English.

“Violence was thick in the air..

Ridiculous, it would be funny if it were not for the fact that the purpose of such inflammatory statements is to incite islamophobia. The activists can clearly be heard saying “this is what free speech is about; we are going to let you have your platform and you’ll be able to talk without being interrupted but right now it would be nice to have a couple of answers…” — hardly the words of someone contemplating violence.

“Passersby looked on in astonishment, and perhaps shame, but it seemed the sight of angry bearded, caftaned Muslims was sufficient to deter any intervention. To me, it felt like Brownshirts in a street scene in 1920s Berlin..”

Passersby took our leaflets explaining who you were, and yes they were astonished, astonished that a professor could get away with saying such racist things. What ‘angry, caftaned Muslims’? Do you see any, or is that also a figment of your imagination, a part of your racism?

“Uncurbed, Muslim intimidation in the public domain of people they see as disagreeing with them is palpable and palpably affecting the British Christian majority among whom they live, indeed, cowing them into silence. One senses real fear…”

Yes you are afraid, your fear is that the British public have woken up to Israels crimes and are no longer prepared to give Israel a free pass on account of the Holocaust. You fear that the activists were mainly not Muslims but were of all faiths and none, all united against your racism and against Israels racism.

Watch the video [below] or see the stills above and decide for yourself if there is a shred of truth in Benny Morris’s account of what happened.

In the ‘best’ Zionist tradition, others like Melanie Phillips have continued, where Morris stopped, in adding their own embellishments to the story in their own reporting of the encounter which they never witnessed. Melanie Phillips writes for the Daily Mail newspaper and is a regular panelist on BBC’s Question Time (BBC One) and The Moral Maze (BBC Radio 4), her shoddy journalism is clearly a reflection on the publications and on the programmes that pay her to spout her lies.

Its strange that Benny Morris should mention the Brownshirts of 1920s Berlin, and yet at the same time be oblivious to the parallels between his justification of ethnically cleansing the Palestinians to make way for his ‘Jewish state,’ his racially pure Jewish State and the Nazis justification of cleansing Germany of the Jews in order to make way for their racially pure Aryan state.

1. Haaretz Magazine, January 8, 2004.

I would tell you that this mountain that the settlers named the San Francisco Peaks is tethered to my heart if I didn’t worry that you would then dismiss my words as those of a wannabe flake. I would tell you that I once had to fly to Manila for a wedding, and the further the plane took me from the silhouette of this mountain the thinner that cord stretched until I was sure it would break and I would be lost forever. I would tell you that I once drove back from dances on the Hopi reservation north of these mountains, came round a curve in the highway, saw that silhouette and knew in an instant that the Hopi and the mountain they call Nuva’tuk-iya-ovi are clasped as two warm hands might be clasped. I would tell you that I stood on this mountain that the Dine call Dook’o'oosÌÌd and watched a Navajo apprentice healer touch a boulder as tenderly as he might have touched his child, but I worry that you might relegate me to the long-gone New Age. And if I tell you that I heard a Dine woman say that disrespecting the Mountain is a form of genocide, “because the health of the Dine men is linked with the Mountain; and the health of the Mountain is linked with their health.” I hope you would listen with an open heart.

It is a bright July morning in Northern Arizona. White clouds drift above the road. It is monsoon season, but there is no hint of storm on its way. I drive on a winding two lane that goes up to Snowbowl, a small ski resort on this desert mountain. A mile or so of the road is reduced to one lane because the ski resort is dynamiting and gouging a trench in which they plan to lay pipes in which treated wastewater will be carried to make fake snow. Thousands of Native Americans, their supporters and environmentalists have battled the Snowbowl’s plan for at least ten years — in the courts, on the streets, in the parking lot of the resort, in front of Flagstaff’s local newspaper office, on-line and, most recently, by locking themselves down to the equipment that is now lacerating the face of the mountain. A week ago, a group of activists set up an encampment and invited others to join them. They set up a central Cook Shack and information tent. (During slavery in America, the Cook Shack was the place slaves would meet to plan their escapes to the North. There, they were safe from the master and the master’s spies.) And today we will gather in a circle and pray.

I pull into the Snowbowl parking lot. One of the encampment’s organizers takes me up to the Snowbowl’s clear-cuts where acres of old growth fir and pine have been leveled. My gut twists. I tell Ned that I had stood in the Hopi village of Shungopavi a few days earlier and watched the Katsinas dance. Each of the dancers wore a ruff of fir twigs around their necks — fir that had been gathered in a manner no less reverent than the dances. The Katsinas and the watchers were in ceremony for the mountains upon which the Katsinas make weather. For a human to make snow from wastewater on Nuva’tuk-iya-ovi is the same as a person taking a leak on the main altar of the Vatican or in the Holy of Holies in a synagogue.

“So the Snowbowl has killed these fir,” my friend said. “Sacrilege.”

When we returned to the parking lot, the circle was gathering. I stepped into place and waited. Klee Benally, Dine (Navajo) musician and activist picked up his drum. His voice rose bright as obsidian into the huge sky. I felt my heartbeat slow, saw the others in the circle seem to settle more fully into their bodies. We had begun.

One by one, each of us spoke. We were Dine, Anglo, Mexican, South American, old and young, women and men, a tiny baby, a family down from the Rez, a tall, dark, dreadlocked man with his son at his side. When it was his turn to speak, he spoke of his wish for his son to know the mountain as he did. Then he told us what had happened when he and Klee had been waiting for the rest of us to arrive: “Klee was waiting with his drum. I was walking toward him. Some white guys were walking toward the trail. I overheard an older white man loudly say, ‘Look at that Indian playing his drum, don’t they know that they were all exterminated? Get over it.’ Another friend confronted the guy and asked him to say it to Klee’s face. The man declined and denied that he said anything.”

There was absolute silence in the circle, then the sound of muffled sobbing. The dreadlocked man’s face was wet with tears. A young woman next to me had buried her face in her hands. I remembered the February 2005 summit meeting between tribal elders, leaders and medicine people and Nora Rasure, who was then Forest Supervisor. Middle-aged Native American men, sombre women and elders had talked with tears streaming down their faces about the life-essential threads that weave between their people and the Mountain. I’d heard Nora Rasure say after four hours of testimony, “Well, skiers have their rights too. I have to protect them as well.”

The young woman took her hands from her face, looked up at the Mountain and said, “I am part of the encampment. I want to talk about the environmental effects of the contaminants in treated wastewater.” I listened to her words, but my thoughts were with Klee and the angry white man. I remembered standing years earlier along the highway just before the Snowbowl Road, holding a sign that said, “Why no snow-making? — stop and learn why;” and the enraged faces of the skiers on their way up the mountain, the curses, the foul insults. I remembered the genuine question I heard again and again from friends who skied or snowboarded, “What’s the big deal about snowmaking?”

And, as I stood in a circle of people on the slope of the Mountain, I knew the answer. The big deal about snow-making with treated wastewater on the San Francisco Peaks (Nuva’tuk-iya-ovi/Dook’o'oosÌÌd) is cultural extermination. It is genocide.

For more information: www.indigenousaction.org or www.truesnow.org.

There should be no hiding place. But international law never reaches into some corners because the levers that control the wheels of justice, we discover, are sometimes leaned on by the criminals themselves.

The International Criminal Court was supposed to change all that. It is governed by the Rome Statute and is the first permanent, treaty-based, international criminal court established “to help end impunity for the perpetrators of the most serious crimes of concern to the international community”.

The ICC says it is independent and not part of the United Nations system… but that is not strictly true, as we’ll see.

115 states have signed up to the Rome Statute. The UK is one of them, I’m pleased to say. And so too is Afghanistan. But states like the US and Israel rank alongside Saudi and Libya beyond the perimeter.

A further 34 countries, including Russia, have signed but not ratified the statute. These states are obliged, under the law of treaties, to refrain from “acts which would defeat the object and purpose” of the Rome Statute. Three of these states—Israel, Sudan, and the United States—signed and then, presumably realising their conduct was not up to the standards expected and wishing to undermine the Statute whenever it suited them, “unsigned”.

The Court has jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes committed by nationals of a State Party or on the territory of a State Party since 1 July 2002, the date the Rome Statute came into effect.

The Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) lists some pretty woolly objectives including:

• To maximize the Office of the Prosecutor’s contribution to the fight against impunity and the prevention of crimes.
• To enhance cooperation with States and relevant actors, in particular for the execution of arrest warrants issued by the Court.

Does any of this help Palestine? The ICC’s website reports that on 22 January 2009, the Palestinian National Authority lodged a declaration with the Registrar under Article 12(3) of the Rome Statute which allows States not party to the Statute to accept the Court’s jurisdiction. “The OTP will examine issues related to its jurisdiction: first whether the declaration accepting the exercise of jurisdiction by the Court meets statutory requirements; and second whether crimes within the Court’s jurisdiction have been committed. The Office will also consider whether there are national proceedings in relation to alleged crimes.”

In October 2009 a delegation from the PNA and the Arab League presented the Court with a report in support of the PNA’s ability to delegate its jurisdiction to the ICC. In January 2010, the OTP sent a letter summarizing its activities to the United Nations then, in May, published a “Summary of submissions on whether the declaration lodged by the Palestinian National Authority meets statutory requirements.”

After 28 months the Prosecutor has still made no determination on the issue.

After wading through Articles 6, 7, and 8 of the Rome Statute describing the numerous crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocides the ICC is supposed to deal with — the sort of horrors Palestinians have to face every day — I found that Article 12(3) of the Rome Statute refers to Article 12(2) which refers to Article 13 (a) and (c)… which is enough to make one want to lie down in a darkened room and lose the will to live.

So I was very pleased to hear from Dr David Morrison in Dublin who periodically sends me excellent briefings and carefully researched articles from his organization, Sadaka – the Ireland Palestine Alliance. One of his latest pieces looked at the hypocrisy of referring Libya to the ICC.

The US wants impunity for itself (and Israel) while prosecuting others

Libya is not a party to the International Criminal Court and is among many states that do not accept its jurisdiction. Yet three months ago the UN Security Council voted unanimously, in Resolution 1970, to refer the situation in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. Five of the states that voted for this referral – China, India, Lebanon, Russia, and the US – are not parties to the ICC and don’t accept its jurisdiction. So here we see the US among those forcing Libya to accept the jurisdiction of the ICC, when it refuses to do so itself.

Dr Morrison points also to the case of Sudan in 2005 when the Security Council decided to refer the situation in Darfur to the ICC Prosecutor. Sudan isn’t a party to the ICC either. On that occasion the US and China abstained, but 3 states — Philippines, Russia, and Tanzania — which don’t accept the jurisdiction of the ICC voted for Sudan to be subjected to it.

The ICC charged the President of Sudan, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, with genocide and two other Sudanese nationals with lesser charges.

How were these referrals possible, asks Morrison? The answer lies in Article 13(b) of the Rome Statute, under which the ICC may exercise jurisdiction if “a situation in which one or more crimes appears to have been committed is referred to the Prosecutor by the Security Council acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations [action to maintain peace]”.

So the ICC is not the independent judicial body it pretends to be. Its jurisdiction can be extended or re-directed on the say-so of the Security Council to apply to states that have refused its jurisdiction.

Of course, says Dr Morrison, that can’t happen to non-Statute members of the Security Council who only have to wield their veto to block any attempt by UN colleagues to extend the ICC’s jurisdiction to their territory.

In his view a Court with universal jurisdiction is fair. A Court whose jurisdiction you, as a state, can choose to accept or reject has some semblance of fairness. But a Court like the ICC, whose jurisdiction can be targeted, at the whim of the Security Council, on certain states that have chosen not to accept it, but not on others, is grossly unfair.

Dr Morrison’s analysis reveals how evil this manipulation can be. The primary duty for prosecuting war crimes and crimes against humanity lies with the state in which they were committed, and the ICC only acquires jurisdiction to prosecute if the state fails to do so. The Court can prosecute any individual responsible for these crimes regardless of civilian or military status or official position.

This means that, in theory, a national of a state that is not party to the Statute, for example a US national, may be tried by the ICC for crimes committed in a state that is a party to the Statute. The US is particularly opposed to this, since it has civilian and military personnel in lots of states around the world, many of which are party to the Statute. It is US policy to prevent the ICC trying any US nationals.

Because of this, Resolution 1970 [the Libya referral] includes a paragraph exempting nationals from states not party to the ICC, including US nationals, from the jurisdiction of the ICC for acts committed in Libya… The hypocrisy surrounding this is staggering…

Indeed.

Dr Morrison also homes in on what are termed ‘Article 89 Agreements’. Under 89(1) of the Rome Statute, states that are party to the ICC are required to “comply with requests for arrest and surrender” by the Court. These could be for the arrest and surrender of US nationals. To prevent this, the US has taken advantage of Article 98(2), which says: “The Court may not proceed with a request for surrender which would require the requested State to act inconsistently with its obligations under international agreements pursuant to which the consent of a sending State is required to surrender a person of that State to the Court, unless the Court can first obtain the cooperation of the sending State for the giving of consent for the surrender.” The US has negotiated agreements with more than a hundred states to block surrender of US nationals to the Court.

To ensure obedience, if states are party to the ICC they cannot receive military aid from the US without signing such an agreement. The American Service-Members’ Protection Act stipulates that “no United States military assistance may be provided to the government of a country that is a party to the International Criminal Court”, although NATO members and certain non-NATO allies (including Israel of course) are exempted, as are those who signed an Article 89 agreement.

“Such are the lengths that the US is prepared to go,” says Morrison, “in order to exclude its own nationals from the jurisdiction of the ICC, while voting in the Security Council to extend the jurisdiction of the ICC for others.”

Will the Court ‘bottle out’ over Goldstone?

In another article, ‘The Goldstone Report does not need correction’, Dr Morrison wonders if the ICC will be allowed to do its job as recommended by Goldstone.

The Israeli Government and others claim that Goldstone, in his recent Washington Post article, retracted completely all the Mission’s findings that Israeli forces had deliberately targeted civilians.

But he did no such thing, says Morrison. “The Mission came to the conclusion that in 11 incidents Israeli forces deliberately targeted civilians. He made a case, based on information of uncertain reliability, that this number should be reduced to 10. The Mission recommended that these matters end up at the International Criminal Court, with individuals being indicted for war crimes and/or crimes against humanity, if the evidence warrants…

“The ICC hasn’t got jurisdiction over these matters at the moment, since neither Israel nor Palestine are parties to the ICC. How can it acquire jurisdiction?”

In theory, he says, there are two ways. First, as mentioned, the Palestinian National Authority has made its submissions and informed the ICC that “the Government of Palestine hereby recognizes the jurisdiction of the Court for the purposes of identifying, prosecuting and judging the authors and accomplices of acts committed in the territory of Palestine since 1 July 2002”.

But it all depends on whether Palestine is a state within the meaning of Article 12(3) of the Rome Statute. If the ICC were to accept jurisdiction, it would not only allow for the indictment of Israelis for offences committed during Operation Cast Lead, but also for other crimes such as settlement building.

Article 8.2(b)(viii) makes it clear that “the transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies” is a war crime.

The second possibility is for the Security Council to refer Operation Cast Lead to the ICC, just as it did the Libyan unpleasantness and Darfur, neither of those countries involved being party to the ICC.

If, as Dr Morrison points out, the ICC did acquire jurisdiction, its investigations would encompass not only the damning material gathered by Goldstone but a whole host of evidence from other organisations such as Human Rights Watch (Rain of Fire: Israel’s Unlawful Use of White Phosphorus in Gaza; Precisely Wrong: Gaza Civilians Killed by Israeli Drone-Launched Missiles; White Flag Deaths: Killings of Palestinian Civilians during Operation Cast Lead; Turning a Blind Eye: Impunity for Laws-of-War Violations during the Gaza War; “I Lost Everything”: Israel’s Unlawful Destruction of Property during Operation Cast Lead), Amnesty International (Israel/Gaza: Operation “Cast Lead”: 22 days of death and destruction) and the Arab League Fact Finding Committee (No Safe Place).

It is nearly two-and-a-half years since the Palestinians’ declaration and the Prosecutor, despite having access to the best legal brains, still hasn’t made a decision to proceed. Why the delay? Goldstone’s Fact-Finding Mission recommended a decision “should be made by the Prosecutor as expeditiously as possible”, another reason perhaps why the poor judge incurred such displeasure in certain quarters.

So is the ICC ‘bottling out’?

In Dr Morrison’s view it is unlikely to accept jurisdiction because of the enormous political implications. “However, one cannot but hope that the matter will be pressed in the Security Council to the point where the US is forced to wield its veto to protect Israel.”

Presumably, the matter would then find its way to the General Assembly, which could urge the Security Council to take proper steps and refer the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory to the ICC, in accordance with article 13(b) of the Rome Statute.

And what of America’s chicanery? This week in London we’ve had to endure President Obama on a state visit lecturing us with words like: “We fight an enemy that respects no law of war, we will continue to hold ourselves to a higher standard — by living up to the values and the rule of law that we so ardently defend… We will proceed with humility… Ultimately, freedom must be won by the people themselves… But we can and must stand with those who so struggle.”

Only a few days earlier he’d said: “No vote at the United Nations will ever create an independent Palestinian state,” and he made the outrageous stipulation that if it did come into being it should be de-militarised – i.e., the Palestinians must be deprived of a basic universal right and rendered incapable of defending themselves. Not only that, they should “negotiate” with their tormentor — the brutal occupying power — and bargain for their freedom like merchants in a bazaar and be prepared to see even more of their trashed and fragmented country lost to Zionist greed.

After Obama’s address to both Houses of Parliament, which was received with rapturous applause, throngs of smitten MPs jockeyed for position to shake the fraud’s hand, a spectacle that must have turned the stomach of those with any inkling of what is actually happening.

The “Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka” was delivered to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on March 31 concerning: 1) alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the last phases of the 26-year old civil war, September 2008 to May 19, 2009; 2) consequences for approximately 300,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) and, by extension, for 2.7 million Sri Lankan Tamils, 13% of the 21 million population.

After receiving the report, which calls for investigations into these allegations, Ban Ki-moon stated that he did not have the power alone but one of three UN bodies had to request such action, either the General Assembly or the Security Council or the Human Rights Council.

The panel—chairman Marzuki Darusman (Indonesia), Steven Ratner (US), and Yasmin Sooka (South Africa)—was commissioned by the Secretary General, June 22, 2010, after Sri Lanka’s government had failed to rehabilitate or reconcile with the Tamils affected by the brutal war, which, according to the Panel, caused up to 40,000 civilian deaths in those eight months, plus several thousand combatants of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and government soldiers.

The Panel began work in September 2010 but had to conduct its research outside Sri Lanka as the government refused this United Nations body permission to enter its country. The Panel could interview many eye witnesses, however, who were eventually released from military camps after months of detention—many of whom bribed their way out—or who were able to escape the war zone towards the end on boats provided by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Several ICRC workers and other humanitarian employees were killed by government military shelling.

Of the dozens of recommendations proposed by the panel, the last two concern the United Nations.

“A. The Human Rights Council should be invited to reconsider its May 2009 Special Session Resolution (A/HRC/8-11/L. 1/Rev. 2) regarding Sri Lanka, in light of this report.”

The above cited resolution had been proposed by the Sri Lankan government to praise its behavior in the war and condemn only the LTTE for war crimes and terrorism. Not a member of the HRC, Sri Lanka got Cuba, then the Non-Aligned Movement president, to introduce it. It passed with 29 voting in favor and 12 against with six abstentions.

The Panel determined that, “the Human Rights Council may have been acting on incomplete information”.

“B. The Secretary-General should conduct a comprehensive review of actions by the United Nations system during the war in Sri Lanka and the aftermath, regarding the implementation of its humanitarian and protection mandates.”

The Panel criticized the UN’s role in this conflict. “During the final stages of the war, the United Nations political organs and bodies failed to take actions that might have protected civilians.”

The Panel recommended that the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) should “commence genuine investigations”, and an independent international mechanism established by the UN Secretary-General should also investigate what did occur.

The Panel recommended that GOSL should also “issue a public, formal acknowledgement of its role in and responsibility for extensive civilian casualties.”

In its summary, the Panel wrote:

The Panel’s determination of credible allegations reveals a very different version of the final stages of the war than that maintained to this day by the Government of Sri Lanka. The Government says it pursued a ‘humanitarian rescue operation’ with a policy of ‘zero civilian casualties’. In stark contrast, the Panel found credible allegations, which if proven, indicate that a wide range of serious violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law were committed both by the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE, some of which would amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity (author emphasis). Indeed, the conduct of the war represented a grave assault on the entire regime of international law designed to protect individual dignity during both war and peace.

Especially the Panel found credible allegations associated with the final stages of the war. Between September 2008 and 19 May 2009, the Sri Lanka Army advanced its military campaign into the Vanni using large-scale and widespread shelling causing large numbers of civilian deaths. This campaign constituted persecution of the population of the Vanni. Around 330,000 civilians were trapped into an ever decreasing area, fleeing the shelling but kept hostage by the LTTE. The Government sought to intimidate and silence the media and other critics of the war through a variety of threats and actions, including the use of white vans to abduct and to make people disappear.

The Government shelled on a large scale in three consecutive No Fire Zones, where it had encouraged the civilian population to concentrate, even after indicating that it would cease the use of heavy weapons. It shelled the United Nations hub, food distribution lines and near the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) ships that were coming to pick up the wounded and their relatives from the beaches. It shelled in spite of its knowledge of the impact, provided by its own intelligence systems and through notification by the United Nations, the ICRC and others. Most civilian casualties in the final phases of the war were caused by Government shelling.

The Government systematically shelled hospitals on the frontlines. All hospitals in the Vanni were hit by mortars and artillery, some of them were hit repeatedly, despite the fact that their locations were well-known to the Government. The Government also systematically deprived people in the conflict zone of humanitarian aid, in the form of food and medical supplies, particularly surgical supplies, adding to their suffering.

The Panel’s full text of 214 pages lists details of possible war crimes and crimes against humanity on both sides in paragraphs 246-252:
The government is accused of: murder, extermination, mutilation, arbitrary imprisonment, rape, torture, persecution founded on race, religion or politics, and disappearances.

The LTTE is accused of: violence to life and person, torture, mutilation, forced labor and forced recruitment of children, and shooting civilians trying to flee the war zone.

The IDP Tamils were brutally confined and treated. Tamils in their traditional Northern and Eastern “High Security Zones” are militarized, denied normal rights, intimidated and made victims of violence.
The Panel therefore recommended that GOSL end all state violence, release all displaced persons and facilitate their return to their homes or provide for resettlement. [Thousands of Tamil homes have been taken over by soldiers and other Sinhalese.] It should also repeal the Emergency Laws that deny democratic and civil rights.

The Mahinda Rajapaksa family regime continues to deny any wrong-doing, contending that NO civilians were killed and were later well treated in IDP camps. It claims it only attacked the LTTE. If there were civilians killed, according to government logic, it is their own fault for being there. The Panel cites international law that “an attack remains unlawful if it is conducted simultaneously at a lawful military object and an unlawfully-targeted civilian population” (paragraph 199).

The GOSL says it has established a transparency process to address the past from the 2002 ceasefire agreement to the end of the conflict, the so-called Lessens Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC).

While the Panel views this as a “potentially useful opportunity to begin a national dialogue”, the “LLRC fails to satisfy key international standards of independence and impartiality, as it is compromised by its composition and deep-seated conflicts of interests of some of its members.”— Three were government officials; one an Attorney-General.

The Panel also points to the history of conflict between the government and Tamils seeking full rights. For decades the Tamils used Gandhian civil disobedience, non-violent tactics before many took up arms in several groups. The Tamils have suffered half-a-dozen pogroms, with government backing, in which thousands were brutally murdered, including mutilation and being burned alive.

In the few instances in which governments have set up commissions of inquiry to examine human rights abuses, they have “failed to produce a public report and recommendations have rarely been implemented”.

The fact is, states the report (paragraph 28):

After independence [from Great Britain in 1948], political elites tended to prioritize short-term political gains, appealing to communal and ethnic sentiments, over long-term policies, which could have built an inclusive state that adequately represented the multicultural nature of the citizenry. Because of these dynamics and divisions, the formation of a unifying national identity has been greatly hampered. Meanwhile, Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism gained traction, asserting a privileged place for the Sinhalese as protectors of Sri Lanka, as the sacred home of Buddhism. These factors resulted in devastating and enduring consequences for the nature of the state, governance and inter-ethnic relations in Sri Lanka.

The first pogrom took place in June 1956 as the new Prime Minister SWRD Bandaranaike (Sri Lanka Freedom Party/SLFP—the same party to which the Rajapaksas belong) backed the “Sinhala Only” bill, one of several discriminatory measures against the Tamil people. Because some Tamils conducted sit-ins, Buddhist monk-led mobs rampaged for ten days, murdering 150 Tamils and burning their homes and businesses. Ironically, because Bandaranaike was willing to engage in dialogue with Tamil leaders he was murdered by a “pacifist” Buddhist monk, September 29, 1959.

Bandaranaike’s widow, Sirimavo, became PM in July 1960 and continued discriminatory policies against Tamils. She sat as PM or President four terms spread over 40 years, for a total of 13 years. She was the world’s first female PM and brought Sri Lanka into the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) as a founding member, in 1961. NAM, now with118 state member, stands against imperialism, interference from foreign nations, bloc politics, and against racism. Cuba and other progressive governments, as well as reactionary ones in the “Third World”- based NAM have, therefore, backed Sri Lanka in international issues.

In 2004, Cuba and Venezuela launched ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America) as an alternative to capitalist economic and political coalitions. Today there are eight Latin American government members, including Ecuador, which is now on the HRC along with Cuba. In 2009, Bolivia and Nicaragua, both in ALBA, were members of the HRW supporting Sri Lanka.

These socialist leaning governments have better human rights records than the previous capitalist governments of their countries, which were for many decades under the dictates of US imperialism and before that under European colonialism. ALBA partners now have a chance whether on the Council or not to help the Tamil people in some way, also by calling for an investigation.

This is the challenge that the countries of NAM on the HRC now face with the Panel’s recommendations for an international investigation into alleged war crimes. Will they resist criticizing a member for its racist and terrorist actions against an entire people, or will they take sides with a clearly oppressed people? The latter choice might place them voting alongside the rich, Western nations that will probably call for some sort of an investigation. (See my piece on this dilemma.)

As I view the possible thinking of socialist Cuba and other NAM countries, the dilemma is between supporting sovereignty for Third World countries confronted with interference from imperialist and former colonialist states, a legitimate issue, and conducting national policies in such a way that no section of the population is systematically discriminated against or subject to genocide.

Since the 2009 HRC resolution, there are 15 new countries on it, among them the US. One must ask: just what is the game plan of the US and its European allies, who make sounds of protest against Sri Lanka’s abuse of human rights while they are the worst offenders, constantly engaging in aggressive wars against NAM members and others: now warring against the sovereign government of Libya, the peoples of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Palestine.

One can also ask why one of the Panel members, Ratner, participated in such an elaborate, comprehensive and just report. As a legal expert of international law he advised the US State Department (1998-2008), which is the major political aggressor in the world and has backed Sinhalese nationalist governments against Tamil’s liberation efforts, providing armaments, intelligence, finances, military training, propaganda. (See my article.)

But then most governments of both “blocs” have done the same: China, Russia, India, the UK and other European states, even Iran and also and especially Israel.

Clearly victims of US permanent war aggression, such as Cuba, react against its hypocritical “support” for “human rights”, and side with the “victim” Sri Lanka. Not in all cases, however, is the “victim” innocent. There are more offenders of human lives and civil rights than the imperialists. And the Sinhalese majority has been whipped up by Buddhist supremacist clergy and Sinhalese nationalist chauvinism by all the governments in Sri Lanka since 1948. Unfortunately, and without comprehension from my viewpoint, most of the Sinhalese-led Communist, Trotskyist, and Maoist parties have immorally allied themselves with the two major parties to keep the Tamils down.
The United Nations is comprised of 192 nations, only three in the world are not in it: Kosovo—a separatist state creation of the US-EU; Taiwan, a separated part of China; and 771 people in the state of the Vatican City. The member states of the HRC, with China and Russia and other large countries represent more than one-half the world’s citizens.

Third World countries comprise the majority on the HRC. They have many ethnic peoples long oppressed and brutalized by others. Let us remember Rwanda and how the UN failed to intervene and prevent genocide of one million people. The UN again failed in a similar debacle in Sri Lanka. Let us hope that the Human Rights Council will redeem these tragedies regardless of motives.

There is no marker, historical plaque, or even a sign post to commemorate the Deir Yassin massacre, which was the most pivotal event in the Naqba or the 1948-49 dispossession of Palestinians and the beginning of the brutal ethnic cleansing that continues today, largely with American support.

The Holocaust Industry ensures that Jewish victims are worthy of remembering. In countless films, memoirs, novels, articles, museums, memorials, and educational programs Jewish victimhood is recounted over and over again. Professional victims like Elie Wiesel cast and recast the Holocaust narrative so that the world will “never forget” and consequently will ignore the apartheid conditions imposed on over half of the population living within the borders Israel now controls. The irony that Wiesel worked for the terrorist Irgun and steadfastly refuses to apologize for the massacre his employer perpetrated is never exposed in our Israel-centric media.

No comparable organization or dedication exists on the Palestinian side partly because the power of “worthy” victimhood is not recognized and partly out of fear of charges of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.

When Sarah Palin put on her Star of David necklace and toured Yad Vashem three weeks ago she pandered to Jewish power and to the memory of “worthy” victims. Had she visited Deir Yassin or even mentioned its name, she would have ended her career in American politics. The same has been true of all obligatory visits by American politicians including Clinton, Giulani, Huckabee, and Romney.

Lipstadt is clearly opposing holocaust deniers whom she also identifies as anti-Semites, yet, she fails to define what denial means. She also comes short of suggesting what anti-Semitism stands for. I guess that for Lipstadt, ‘deniers’ are those who insist that our past must be revisited, scrutinised and be told from different perspectives. People who hold such views are usually called historical revisionists or simply historians. Yet, historical revisionists are clearly perceived by Lipstadt as anti-Semites — I guess that for Lipstadt, those who dare touch or fiddle with the Jewish past are nothing less than enemies.

The ‘deniers’, according to Lipstadt, are a lively movement that is working vigorously to “distort history and inculcate anti-Semitism”. Yet, it is far from being clear how anyone can ‘distort history’, for history is not a singular set of facts laid down and dictated by one group of people alone. Rather it is an attempt to transform the past into a story aspire to as full a narrative as is possible, drawn from as many points of view and from as wide a body of research as is available. History is an attempt then, to build a narrative. Different people should be entitled to hold different perspectives of their past.

Seemingly, Lipstadt is not happy with it all. She wants the chapter known as the holocaust to become a meta-historical impenetrable narrative. It is not clear to me and to a growing number of academics, artists and ordinary people, why Jewish academics and institutions are so afraid of this particular chapter in history being looked at and discussed freely.

For some peculiar reason Lipstadt regards herself as a ‘scholar’, yet her engagement with the subject matter is far from being scholarly oriented. Her reading of the Nazi era is utterly embarrassing — for instance, she says “had the world taken Nazi anti-Semitism more seriously from the outset of the rise of the Third Reich the subsequent tragedy might have been quite different.”

But it seems as if the world did actually react very seriously to Nazi anti-Semitism. It basically followed the Nazi agenda. America and Britain closed their gates to Jews, leaving European Jewish refugees to face their fate. Even the Zionists failed to do much to save their European brothers and sisters. It is also clear that the Nazis would not have succeeded in their ethnic cleansing project unless they had been assisted by European communities, governments, and even by Jewish institutions. It seems as if the Nazis were not the only anti-Semites; they were just more open about it.

Lipstadt’s ignorance knows no limits. She continues, “in the 1930s and 1940s, of course, observers—and the potential victims—could not fathom where Hitler and his cohort’s anti-Semitism might lead.” I guess that the Jewish ‘historian’ doesn’t really know that in the 1930’s and the early 1940’s ‘Hitler and his cohort’ also didn’t know themselves where they were aiming’. We do know that they wanted a Germany free of Jews — and this is, indeed, pretty outrageous. Yet, it is not that different from the vast majority of Israelis, who want a Palestine that is free of Palestinians.

Lipstadt is convinced that the ‘deniers’ are motivated by “hatred of Jews and their desire to do them harm”. But the truth of the matter is slightly embarrassing: historical revisionism is a growing body of knowledge. It doesn’t claim to address ‘the Jewish question’, nor does it offer any political agenda, and neither does it call to harm Jews. However, one may note that rather too often we come across Jewish institutional calls to harm, and even to destroy, Arabs and Muslims. I would then, expect Lipstadt to be consistent, and to stand against her own brothers’ and sisters’ genocidal inclinations. But clearly, integrity is not something you should expect from a Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies.

When it becomes clear that Lipstadt has nothing clever to say about the subject (or maybe any subject) she pulls the rabbit out of her hat, or should we say, she pulls Ahmadinejad out of her wig. “During the past five years we have heard a stream of Holocaust denial, overt anti-Semitism, and threats against Israel emanate from the mouth of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad… Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial is linked directly to his animus toward Israel.”

And this is where Jewish past, present and future are wrapped together into a collective meaning that appears totally impervious to reason, ethics or humanity. It is obviously clear that those who oppose Israeli barbarism may, at a certain stage, look at the Zionist’s raison d’être, namely the holocaust. It is obviously natural for those who detest Israeli lies to scrutinise every Israeli or Jewish narrative – And the question is, what is so wrong with doing so? Why are Jews, or at least some Jews, horrified by the idea that others might be suspicious of aspects of their historical narratives? Why is it so difficult for Lipstadt to accept that Ahmadinejad opposes Israel, and also, questions aspects of the Jewish past?

“In 2009”, says Lipstadt, “after questioning the existence of the Holocaust, he (Ahmadinejad) declared it was a ploy used by the Jews to get the West to accede to the creation of Israel.” Again, isn’t it a scholarly and legitimate question on behalf of Ahmadinejad? Are not the holocaust and the foundation of the Jewish State inherently linked?

But — Don’t you worry, it is not Ahmadinejad alone whom the Yeshiva Scholar hates. “Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser spoke of the lie of the 6 million Jews… Spokesmen for Hamas have also engaged in Holocaust denial. Holocaust denial themes can be found in newspapers in many parts of the Arab world, including in Jordan, Egypt, and Lebanon.”

Even Mahmoud Abbas was a ‘denier’ according to the Shoa genius, “as a young student, (Abbas) wrote a dissertation that was pure denial.” But guess what, Abbas doesn’t have to worry; Lipstadt has forgiven him already. He (Abbas) “subsequently repudiated his view” and Lipstadt “fully believes his repudiation.” At least, Lipstadt is flexible enough to amend her ‘academic’ views so they fit into the current Israeli political agenda.

I guess that it would make sense to argue that Lipstadt is continuing to fight what is by now a lost battle. Our past is not a Jewish property. When I read Lipstadt’s pseudo-academic diatribe, I am convinced that aspects of the Zionist view of history must continue to be scrutinised and debated, for history cannot be handled or censored by any form of Yeshiva scholarship, for Yeshiva ideology is the complete opposite of Western spirit, intellectual debate and openness.

Lipstadt asserts, “seventy years ago people had an acceptable reason to say, ‘We could never fathom that Hitler meant what he said.’ Today we no longer have that luxury. At the very least it behooves us to take Ahmadinejad and those among his fellow Muslim leaders and opinion-makers seriously.”

Seemingly Lipstadt urges Western leaders to dismantle Iran and other Muslim countries in the name of the history she doesn’t allow them to revise or scrutinise. I guess that for the sake of world peace, it is necessary to expose people like Lipstadt and her cohort.

In her final paragraph Lipstadt seems to find out what is wrong with the revisionists, “their Holocaust denial is part of their contemporary political agenda.”

In psychological terminology, the above is defined as projection — Lipstadt projects her own symptoms on historical revisionists. It is obviously clear that Lipstadt’s ‘holocaust evangelism’ is there to serve her own Zio-centric political agenda.

The question you may want to ask yourself at this stage is, for how long will we let Yeshiva supremacist Ideology determine our vision of our past? I myself believe that time is ripe to say NO to Jewish Ideology and politics. Enough is certainly enough.

Now, who wouldn’t be heartened to learn that mechanized forces being used against civilians, civilians whose only demand was freedom from tyranny, were destroyed?

One might easily regard intervention, limited strictly to such targets, as both ethical and desirable, but the truth is that intervention is never limited to such targets, and the realities motivating it are loaded with error and, most importantly, with intentions at odds with high-sounding public statements.

The record for intervention is one of greater death and destruction than the threats it is supposed to stop where it is used and of allowing monstrous crimes to go unchallenged where it is avoided. Indeed, it has been avoided always where monstrous crimes are involved, the very situations in which its human costs might be more than offset by what it prevents. Nowhere in the record is there any consistency with regard to principle despite the press releases accompanying every new bombardment.

The glimmer of moral satisfaction we feel at the first instance of an event such as the French jets destroying some of Gaddafi’s armor about to attack a city is badly misplaced, for if ethics or morality is to mean anything, it must absolutely be consistent in application. You cannot meaningfully speak of selective ethics.

At the very time of the events in Libya, we have the same civil unrest and demands for an end to absolute and unaccountable government in Yemen and Bahrain, and they have been met with fairly large-scale abuse and killings by police. Literally scores have been shot dead in the streets. In the case of Bahrain, we have troops from Saudi Arabia – an absolute monarchy much resembling something from the 14th century – entering the country to assist Bahrain’s government in stopping its people seeking freedom.

Now, anyone who knows anything about the Mideast knows that Saudi Arabia would not march a single platoon of soldiers across its border without explicit approval from Washington. It just cannot be otherwise because America keeps an intensely close watch on matters affecting its client-state, Israel, and because Saudi Arabia’s advanced weapons come from America, and also because, following 9/11, most of the perpetrators having been Saudi nationals, Saudi Arabia has had to work long and hard to gain some trust back from Washington.

So where is the moral or ethical balance? Help the tyrant in Bahrain and attack the one in Libya? Why is only Libya a target?

There are many reports, not carried in the mainline press, about Israel supplying the African mercenaries who have been doing most of the bloody work in Libya. They are said to have been supplied by an Israeli military contracting firm connected to Mossad at the kind of high per diem rates which Gaddafi’s oil wealth allows. One of Gaddafi’s sons also made a visit for private talks in Israel in the early days of the rebellion’s repression. Such events, we can be absolutely sure, also do not happen without approval from Washington.

It appears America has both indirectly helped the tyrant while directly, albeit belatedly, fighting him. I don’t see any evidence of ethics in that situation.

Gaddafi certainly has grown into an unpleasant figure, displaying signs of deteriorating mental health while commanding the powers of a fairly rich small state. His early days as a rather dashing and intelligent revolutionary figure – few people recall he was featured in a cover story of the New York Times Magazine decades ago portraying him in rather flattering son-of-the-desert terms, the kind of article about a foreign leader which always has the imprimatur of the CIA – are lost in the reality of a mumbling old tyrant who has proved ready to strike down civilians to maintain his position. Naturally, people feel exhilarated to see him lose some military advantage.

Most humans do appear to be programmed by nature to cheer in situations where there is a clear bad guy and a good guy going after him. That is why blockbuster Hollywood movies and professional wrestling generate billions of dollars in revenue by repeating endlessly the same simple plot with only changes of costume. But world affairs are never so simple.

Just consider Israel’s assault on Gaza a few years ago, a place which is essentially a large, fenced-in refugee camp possessing no serious weapons. Israel killed something like 1,400 people, including hundreds of children, estimated at 400 young souls, and its soldiers committed such barbarities as using children as human shields. One saw pictures on the Internet of blood running like sewer overflow in the streets of Gaza. Yes, hundreds of children killed and with no rebuke from Washington or Paris or London and certainly no threat of having a no-fly zone or other violent measures imposed.

Up to the point of intervention, information from Libya suggests nothing on quite that scale of barbarism had occurred, rather there was the beginning of a conventional civil war with one side having better resources. So why the immense difference in response between the two situations? Why did we see Libyan victims on television, but the worst of what Israel committed could only be found on the Internet? Selectivity is at work always in these matters from the very start.

Not long before the Gaza atrocity, we had yet another invasion of Southern Lebanon by Israel. More than a thousand people were killed in their own land, and here we had the added horror of hundreds of thousands of bomblets from that cruellest of weapons, American cluster bombs, being showered over civilian areas, destined to kill and cripple for years to come. Along the way, Israel showed its contempt for international law by deliberately targeting a group of United Nations’ observers who died bravely doing their duty.

Yet there was no effort to punish or even restrict Israel as we see today imposed on Gaddafi. How can anyone claim that the response in Libya is ethical?

Libya is now being so heavily bombed that some Muslim states which joined the “coalition” are making loud noises about the United Nation’s mandate being exceeded. If you read newspapers from Britain as well as North America, you will know that there is disagreement between the public statements of the British and American governments as to what constitutes legitimate targets.

But when it comes to bombing, America never does anything by halves.

Shortly after the French attack at Benghazi, 124 cruise missiles, mostly American, began destroying targets in Libya. Reports say four B-52s flew from Europe, each with 30 tons of bombs, and three B-2 stealth bombers, carrying a total of 45 two thousand-pound, “bunker-buster” bombs, flew from the United States. And that was just the start.

Despite protestations, American targets certainly included sites associated with Gaddafi himself, his own compound having been destroyed.

And there you have another of many problems with intervention, or, as some like to call it, ethical war: it depends upon the Frankenstein military of the United States because no one else has its destructive capacities, forces which we have seen, again and again, not only kill in great excess but which typically are directed to dark tasks not featured in the propaganda leading up to the effort.

Recall the American “humanitarian” mission in Somalia in the early 1990s, the one that ended with “Blackhawk down.” We were all conditioned by endless pictures of starving Somalis to welcome efforts at their relief, but the American military, instead of serving the roles of distributing relief supplies and guarding those distributing relief supplies – the ostensible purposes of the mission – almost immediately went after what they regarded as “the bad guys.”

They attempted to kill one of the major local warlords with special planes equipped with modern Gatling guns, circling the sky and spraying large-calibre shells in built-up areas, at the rate of thousands per minute, much of that indiscriminate firepower killing innocent people and destroying property in a poor region. Hundreds of Somalis were killed by the American efforts, and some reports put the number at 10,000.

But we will never learn the truth from the American government, which, since its debacle in Vietnam, always suppresses the numbers it kills. It did so in the first Gulf War where tens of thousands of poor Iraqi recruits sitting behind sand walls in the desert were carpet-bombed by B-52s, their bodies later bulldozed into the ground. It did so in Afghanistan, where it regularly has killed civilians for ten years. And it did so in that pure war crime, the invasion of Iraq.

America’s effort to get the “bad guy” in Somalia was an act of complete arrogance and sheer stupidity, clearly reflecting America’s ingrained streak of hell-and-damnation Puritanism and its Captain Ahab obsession with chasing the white whale over whole oceans. All Americans achieved was to make a deadly enemy, as they shortly learned. They ended up, pretty much leaving the country shamefully and forgetting their first purpose in going there, distributing relief to the starving, something Canada’s soldiers and others routinely do without creating such aggression and such violent results.

Recall again President Clinton’s launching a large salvo of missiles in 1998 towards targets in the Afghan mountains and at a Sudanese plant in Khartoum. They were said to be aimed at terrorist targets, but the public was given no detailed information. We do know the plant in Sudan proved to be just what it was claimed by locals, a pharmaceutical plant, Dozens of innocent people were killed and property worth many millions of dollars was destroyed to no purpose, based entirely on incorrect information.

Clinton also launched 23 cruise missiles towards targets in Baghdad in 1993, supposedly in retaliation for an Iraqi-sponsored attempt on former-President George Bush when he visited Kuwait, although the public was given no details of the supposed plot. Even granting there was a plot, if you are entitled to hurl thousands of pounds of high explosives at a distant city owing to a faulty dark operation, what are we to say of the many countries and millions of people who have been victims of America’s many dark operations? What principle is at work here other than might makes right?

Ethical war is an absurd term, just as is the idea of bombing for democracy is. Always and anywhere, as soon as the military engines are started, just as is said for truth, ethics are left behind. War is a playground for adventurers and psychopaths. Just recall those American pilots during the first Gulf War whose cockpit transmissions were broadcast on television while they strafed Iraqi troops retreating from Kuwait City: their chilling words included, “Hey, this’s like shootin’ fish in a barrel!” And readers should remember that that first Gulf War was itself little more than an American dark operation intended to put Hussein into a compromising position and topple him.

Deeply discrediting the whole confused concept of ethical war are not just the many crimes committed in its name but the many greater omissions. Genocide has become one of the most abused and misused terms of our time, someone ignorantly using it every time a group of people is killed anywhere, but we have had several authentic genocides since World War II, and I think we can all agree if ever there could be a case for ethical war, it would be the case of genocide. But it is precisely in the case of genocide that all the powers simply hide, the United States having a completely shameful record.

In the case of Indonesia, following the downfall of President Sukarno in 1967, about half a million people had their throats slashed and their bodies dumped into rivers because they were, or were suspected of being, communists. The entire nation was turned temporarily into an abattoir for humans, and where was the United States, defender of freedom, during the horror? Rather than any effort to stop the terror, it had employees of the State Department on phones around the clock feeding the names of people they’d like to see included in the extermination.

In the case of Cambodia during the late 1970s, the “killing fields” saw about a million people murdered by the mad ideologues of the Khmer Rouge. Where was the United States? Nowhere to be seen or heard, off licking its wounds from its long, pointless war in Vietnam, except when Vietnamese forces finally crossed the border to stop the bloodshed, the United States yelped, “See, we told you so, the ‘domino effect’ is now at work!” And to this day, few Americans take any responsibility for their county’s role in creating the “killing fields.” In its desperate efforts to win in Vietnam, President Nixon’s government launched huge aerial bombardments and incursions by troops into a neutral country, finally so destabilizing it that the Khmer Rouge took power.

In the case of Rwanda in 1994, the world watched something on the order of 800,000 people hacked to pieces, the victims selected merely for their ethnic identity. President Clinton knew every detail from the beginning but made every effort to avert his eyes and prevent the United States from being involved.

So much for the notion of ethical war in the very cases where it could conceivably have made a difference.

The United States’ motives for intervening in Libya are complex and anything but ethical. It was reluctant even to speak out at first. The truth is that stability in the Middle East – stability as defined by the bloody likes of Henry Kissinger – at the complete expense of democratic values or human rights has been bedrock American policy for decades. This policy had the duel objectives of securing the production of oil and making a comfortable climate for Israel.

The United States dithered during recent momentous events in Egypt precisely because Israel benefited from that country’s dictator and was not interested in seeing anything resembling democracy emerge in large Arab states, despite its hypocritical and much-repeated refrain about being the only democracy in the region. Numerous Israeli leaders made the most embarrassingly revealing and shameful statements while the scales were tipping against President Mubarak. But the events proved so unprecedented and so overwhelming and pretty much unstoppable without immense bloodshed that the United States finally came down on the right side, working to restrain Mubarak and to ease the transition in power.

The North African version of Europe in 1848 is very much viewed as a threat by Israel. Imagine all the Palestinians of the occupied West Bank and Gaza, some four million people, plus the non-Jewish people of Israel proper, about a million, stirred by events in North Africa, rising up to demand their rights? Stopping the series of rebellions against unrepresentative governments along the Mediterranean shores must be high on Israel’s list of current foreign policy objectives because it is clear that continued successes encourage new attempts.

Even further, as we have seen, Chancellor Merkel of Germany has rebuked Prime Minister Netanyahu in public for doing nothing for peace, asserting rightly that the changing conditions of the Arab world make it incumbent upon Israel to pursue genuine peace.

There is some hard truth assiduously avoided in Western mainstream press and by Western governments in their public communications: that what anyone outside of Israel would call peace has simply never been an objective of Israel’s government. There is no other way of understanding Israel’s actions over decades than its aiming to acquire virtually all the Palestinian lands without the Palestinians, or, at least, with a reduced number of Palestinians put into utterly subservient arrangements with no political integrity and very limited rights.

But again in Libya, events soon outdistanced United States’ policy. Images of freedom-fighters there being attacked by bloody mercenaries and mechanized forces affected public opinion and allowed of no further dithering, as did the initiatives taken by Britain’s Prime Minister Cameron and France’s President Sarkozy, each for their own political and economic reasons. The truth is that most people are decent, and the general public is always sympathetic with the victims seen in such images, which is precisely why American networks never show images of American troops brutalizing Iraqis or Israelis brutalizing Palestinians.

Gaddafi has long been a disliked third-world leader in the West – independent-minded leaders never are liked by the American government and there is a long list of them who have been overthrown or assassinated regardless of their democratic bona fides – and in a sense the West’s own past extravagant claims about his being a grand sponsor of terror has blown back on it. Added to the fact that he now appears rather mad and to the image of heroic Libyans winning and then losing in their fight for freedom, public opinion has made the course the United States intended difficult if not impossible.

But that does not mean public opinion is right about intervention, a subject not well understood by the average citizen. Even the case of a no-fly zone, something judging from the glib words seems to be considered by many a not very aggressive form of help, is not well understood. A no-fly zone is a complex and highly destructive operation, pushing the operator into something approaching a state of war, and yet having little likelihood of success in turning events on the ground.

Planes first had to fly all over Libya to get the radars turned on. Then attack planes and missiles quickly had to follow-up to destroy the located radars. Airfields and parked planes are also targets. Many people on the ground get killed in the effort, but that’s only the beginning. Twenty-four hour-a-day flyovers must be maintained afterwards to assure radars are not replaced and to attack planes which break the ban, all of which involves more civilian deaths. And from the first day in Libya, the air attacks have gone beyond imposing a no-fly zone, as we saw in the French attack at Benghazi and, at this writing, British attacks on Libyan armor at Ajdabiya.

Anyone who has kept track of American pilots’ efforts in Afghanistan and in Iraq knows that they have killed very large numbers of innocent people, and that even in situations where they have complete air superiority. They still kill innocent Afghans regularly, scores at a time, thousands in total.

The record of no-fly zones is not a happy one. The United States maintained one against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq for a decade after the first Gulf War, a decade of flying over the country and shooting up anything suspicious. There were countless incidents of American planes shooting and bombing people, but the no-fly zone did not prevent Saddam Hussein from achieving his objectives. Unless you are prepared to do to a country what the United States did to Japan during World War II – incinerate whole cities both with conventional or atomic weapons – air power cannot determine the direction of events on the ground with a determined opponent.

Reports at this writing from Libya suggest exactly the same result.

Once the no-fly zone is established, frustration over the opponent’s success on the ground creates a constant temptation to say, “In for a penny, in for a pound,” and to commit more force. You may easily find yourself engaged in yet another war. And everywhere and always in the modern era, the victims of war are mainly not the enemy soldiers or their “bad guy” leaders but the people just trying to live their lives. Just think about the roughly one million people who have perished in Iraq plus the more than two million refugees who fled their country, and consider the fact that one of the Arab world’s most advanced countries is now reduced to a generation without jobs, without dependable electric power and clean water. Saddam Hussein never dreamed of doing that much damage to his people despite his atrocities.

When your objectives going in are confused and uncertain, as are those of the United States, what is the hope for a good outcome? Not great I think. It’s a little like pouring concrete without having constructed a mold. And that is another reason why war for ethical of humanitarian motives has such a poor record: huge investments in death and destruction are made suddenly, upon the occurrence of unanticipated events, and often involving quick turns-around against long-established policy.

Perhaps the worst charge against intervention is that each instance only makes it easier and more acceptable in the future. The long list of minor to major interventions by the United States in the postwar era – most of them with no pretense of international legality or an ethical nature – should serve as a severe warning against going in this direction. From toppling democratic governments in Iran, Guatemala, or Chile to the holocaust in Vietnam with its estimated three million victims and a land left saturated with poisons and landmines, there is virtually no case for intervention that does not make future abuse and horror more likely by those with great power.

It is also well to remember that we have a greatly changed world political environment since the events of 9/11. Today the United States, without hesitation, sends drones into a country with which it is not even at war, Pakistan, and kills hundreds of innocent people. Its so-called “kill-teams” perpetrate horrors in Afghanistan, and recent events suggest they have been at work in Pakistan. It still holds people prisoner with no proper law in the secret locations of its CIA international gulag. The abomination of Guantanamo remains. The honouring of international law and agreements has suffered greatly in favour of doing as you please so long as you have the might.

Even the accepted institution for warranting ethical war, the United Nations, as it exists is a highly inadequate institution to exercise such authority. The United States frequently stands against pretty much the entire world there in opposing perfectly appropriate resolutions and gets its way. And when it wants a resolution approved, member states are subject to behind-the-scenes bribes, cajoling, and threats to produce the votes America wants. No one else has such vast economic, financial, and diplomatic leverage to get what they want there. America has exercised its unique power over the organization many times, from the Korean War to the invasion of Afghanistan. Sometimes, rarely, its demands are so unreasonable that enough of the world’s countries find themselves in a position to resist, as was the case for invading Iraq.

My grandmother, being a shrewd judge of character, was able to accomplish this because she knew Nazis were human beings, desirous of gold and social position; most did not swoon over Nazi ideology. The majority of Nazis were careerist, simply yuppies on the make (“just looking for a better life for their children”) — and Nazi officials were giving out the jobs, so they joined the party.

Even in the aftermath of the war, after much of their country had been reduced to ruins, the people of Germany refused to face their complicity in the crimes of The Third Reich.

In post-war Germany, memory itself seemed to have been firebombed to ash and rubble. For ordinary Germans, the extent of Nazi evil was too great and their own contribution too quotidian to accept personal responsibility for crimes committed by the state. How could the flickering of such tiny desires set the vast world aflame?

Yet over time, after much internal struggle and public confrontation by the nation’s artists, writers, and political activists, later generations of Germans began to accept and take responsibility for the crimes of their collective past. They rolled back the cold slab and forced themselves to gaze within the unmarked tomb bearing the remains of the mortifying history they had buried.

This stands in stark contrast to the manner that the people of the US approach, if at all, the unsavory aspects of their nation’s history. From the genocidal practices inflicted on Native Americans (my father’s people) to the irradiated ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to the killing fields of the Philippines, Vietnam, Iraq, South and Central America and Central Asia, the people of the US have refused to acknowledge and take ownership of the collective sins they carry.
 
German soldiers were no more evil than their fellows in the US military, who, for example, man the operation systems of Cruise Missiles and navigate predator drones, and kill, detached from feeling, from thousands of miles away. After all, they are only following orders, just doing their jobs as loyal soldiers and good Americans…just like all those good Germans of my grandmother’s day.
 
Although, on a personal level, I carry a pedigree of atavistic oppression in my bartered blood (my father, born on a so called Indian reservation; my mother rushing to these shores with the flames of the Holocaust at her back) I acknowledge my guilt in all crimes against humanity. For I am human; therefore, I cast a long shadow of instinctual, racial barbarity behind me.

Although I was nowhere in the vicinity, I am an accessory to the crime.
 
In the late 1940s, my grandmother ran guns to the Irgun. She embraced the desperate, nationalist delusion of Zionism. I understand why she did this. But, now, everyday, Palestinians are forced to their knees in order to make amends for the sins of Europe.
 
Although its origins and workings seem to us mysterious and evanescent, evil remains proliferate because our traumatized psyches see it as a force of good. Evil is a deranged angel of self-preservation, convinced his wicked machinations and destructive fury are bulwarks against outside forces aligned to bear his doom.

And that is why I don’t support “our troops.” They are the delivery system of US imperium (even when deployed for “humanitarian” bombing campaigns by audaciously hopeful, Democratic presidents) and should be regarded as such.

Yet, even as I make the pronouncement, I must maintain a stubborn skepticism regarding my own claims of innocence in the matter.

A man who is unconscious of himself acts in a blind, instinctive way and is in addition fooled by all the illusions that arise when he sees everything that he is not conscious of in himself coming to meet him from outside as projections upon his neighbor. — Carl Jung, The Philosophical Tree (1945). In CW 13: Alchemical Studies. p. 335

The myth of Eden and the fall of mankind is a metaphor for leaving the innocence of childhood. In Eden, God, the Father, is above; the very ground is Mother…where the fruits of paradise flow like mother’s milk. Like children, and domesticated animals, the psyche is held suspended there, in primal grace, in a state of unconditional trust to authority.

Accordingly, the much-maligned serpent brings freedom, including freedom’s regrets and sorrows. Ambiguity comes into the world, as opposed to a father-mandated, mother-ensured totality. (In the socio-political realm, for example, if this psychic passage out of ossified Eden doesn’t proceed, its mode of mind can rise as a totalitarian outlook on life. Apropos, the nostalgia of the right to return to an idealized, free market guided and family values beholden, paradisaical past that never existed and can never be.)

With the loss of one’s perceived innocence, the world’s freedoms, with its multiplicity of things, arises…not only animal élan — that being, the ability to be present in the breathing moment, aroused by the scent of blood and pheromone held on the wind — but also foresight and logos i.e., adulthood with all its regrets, responsibilities, reflections, recriminations, and equivocations.
 
The serpent is the hero/anti-hero of the tale. He is the co-creator of the human psyche. He should be given his due, in regard to providing us with the knowledge necessary to leave the pointless inertia of paradise and blunder into the possibility that we may know ourselves to a greater degree and thus be able to see the world before us with a bit more depth, nuance, and clarity.
 
“Purists are deadly, and so they know all about deadly sins.” –James Hillman
 
I have right-wing friends who conflate freedom with predator drones; they rage against the government while swallowing the Pentagon’s propaganda like mother’s milk (a nourishing concoction, if your mother happens to be the Medusa).

In contrast, nice liberals, because they are cut off from their dark, angry side and their hidden, selfish motives, all too often, are boggled by, seemingly frozen in polite mortification, before rightist rage.

(When, for example, a Democratic president orders the launch of cruise missiles, they claim it is done more in sorrow than anger — none of that crass, testosterone-redolent, smell of blood on the wind excitation evinced during military operations under Republican administrations is allowed on public display.)

Why is rage such anathema to liberal sensibilities?

Rage can be a catalyst for both sweeping social change but can provoke backlash. And both situations are unnerving to liberals of the professional classes, who are comfortable within the present system, hence, deep down, don’t desire a shake up of the system that might threaten the privileged positions they hold within it.

As a consequence, liberals, oblivious of their own buried, selfish motivations, have difficulty understanding laboring class anger and resentment and how it is channeled and displaced by conservatives.

“Hustlers of the world, there is one mark you cannot beat: the mark inside.” — William S. Burroughs.

In the theatre of this faux republic, Republicans are effective at selling their imperialist wars of choice and their class-stratifying economic policies because they have become convinced the roles they are playing are real.

Regarding this situation, Konstantin Stanislavski, considered to be the father of modern theatrical conventions, is reported to have instructed, when an actor becomes so deeply merged with the role he is portraying that he begins to believe he is that character, it is time to escort him from the theatre.

In contrast, Democrats can’t seem to find a way into their roles; therefore, they give less than convincing interpretations of the characters they are playing. As a result, their line readings are listless and lack conviction.

And what does this reveal about the rest of us, the supernumeraries in our national tragicomedy, who believe we are central to the plays outcome — this amateur production of Marat Sade — otherwise known as — daily life in our corporate state/militarist imperium?

“Psychoanalysis has to get out of the consulting room and analyze all kinds of things. You have to see that the buildings are anorexic, you have to see that the language is schizogenic, that “normalcy” is manic, and medicine and business are paranoid.”–James Hillmam

In May 1974, the German artist, Joseph Beuys (Born: May 12, 1921, Died: January 23, 1986) arrived in New York City to present a work he titled, I Like America and America Likes Me.

Upon arrival at Kennedy Airport, although in good health, he disembarked the jet, secured upon a gurney, and then was transported by ambulance to a room in the René Block Gallery on East Broadway. Throughout the commute, Beuys, wrapped in a large swath of felt, remained on the gurney, keeping to his vow not to “set foot on US soil” until the US ceased its illegal, immoral war in Southeast Asia and withdrew its combatants from the region.

Once ensconced at his quarters at the gallery, for three days, Beuys shared the space with a wild coyote. At intervals, he would rise to his feet, covered in the swath of felt, and, as he steadied himself on a shepherd’s staff, Beuys would induce the coyote to tear at his covering of felt, inciting the animal to rend the fabric to tatters.
 
Other times, he would simply lie upon a bed of straw, watching the coyote as the coyote watched him — man and beast appraising each other.
 
During the performance piece, Beuys would engage in ritual acts, such as playing percussion on a large triangle and playfully tossing a leather glove to the coyote.
 
After three days, alone in the room, with the animal, Beuys hugged his companion (who appeared to have accepted the artist’s strange behavior) and bid him goodbye.
 
Project completed, Beuys returned to Kennedy Airport, transported, once again, by ambulance, making good on his promise of exiting the US without having set foot upon it.
 
As Beuys would later aver, “I wanted to isolate myself, insulate myself, see nothing of America other than the coyote.” — Uwe M. Schneede, Joseph Beuys Die Aktionen. 1998, p. 330
 
Thus Beuys identified with and symbolically merged with the psyche of his coyote co-art conspirator and opened himself to the cunning, death-devouring spirit of the much-scorned animal (The coyote is an animal that lives on carrion) to gain the creative wherewithal to renounce the death-drunk spirit of US Empire.
 
This is art done not as portfolio building. Beuys did not shirk from his vision as an artist by avoiding what is painful (thus, the ambulance deployed as symbol) and ugly about the world and about himself; instead, he delivered himself directly to its carrion-reeking maw, but refused to have his soul devoured by it.

A terrorist is the product of our education that says that fantasy is not real, that says aesthetics is just for artists, that says soul is only for priests, imagination is trivial or dangerous and for crazies, and that reality, what we must adapt to, is the external world, a world that is dead. A terrorist is a result of this whole long process of wiping out the psyche. — James Hillman

In the last few days, I’ve noticed a marked rise in the levels of anxiety and apprehension in the minds of many of the folks with whom I have contact. Images of irradiated rains and bombing campaigns have left many riddled with dread, haunted by the uncertainty of it all… gripped by the feeling that events are hurtling at an exponential rate of speed towards some ill-defined but tragic reckoning.  

Once at an amusement park, when I was three years of age, I released a cherry flavored lollipop from the apex perch of the carriage of a Ferris Wheel. Entranced, I watched its speed accelerate, as it fell in a plummeting spiral, then shatter to crimson shards on the pavement below.
 
Enchantment broken, stricken with mortification, I recoiled into the coaster’s car…aware, in a flash, of the fragile nature of life. How life and death are bonded together. An eggshell, in which, neither outer shell nor what is contain within can be revealed to each other without a violent intrusion into the other’s sanctity.
 
Even a singular conversation, like a popular uprising or an encounter with a work of art, can be similar to this. One cannot realize the presence of another nor open oneself to real change (in contrast to, hackneyed commercial come-ons and political campaign legerdemain versions of such) without giving oneself over to a small death.
 
As a rule, we remain un-shattered by the presence of others because we cleave to the quotidian shell of selfhood, the habit of remaining intact superseding the eros of the other’s immediacy.
 
Yet there have been moments when I let myself fall… have been shattered to shards… a broken soul among vast constellations of broken souls… and have forgotten, momentarily, my own aloneness… wandering in a unifying wilderness of glinting shards.

“There is a secret love hiding in each problem.” — James Hillman

I find this heartening: With the uprisings across the Islamic world being partly a result of secrets brought to light by WikiLeaks, we have a good illustration of an “unknown variable factor” in play.

Such situations bring both opportunity and peril. Power becomes brutal and ruthless when presented with a credible challenge. This is why Bradley Manning is imprisoned and Julian Assange is under house arrest awaiting extradition, and both will be made to suffer greatly for their actions.

Regardless, I’m switching my party affiliation to the Unknown Variable Party.

As illustrated by Joseph Beuys, I advocate transforming PTSD into Post Traumatic Poetic Discontent. My platform: Don’t miss an opportunity to turn suffering from private shame to public incitement.

My mother escaped Nazi Germany; my father was orphaned on an Indian res., left starving, on the doorstep of a church, during the Great Depression. My earliest memories involve the Civil Rights struggles roiling my native Birmingham, Alabama. Then came the Vietnam War, Nixon, and Watergate. Next, arrived the backlash, in the form of Reaganism that since has diminished and degraded the nation.

Accordingly, I’ve never held any illusion that this world was not seeded with the potential of man-made tumult, stupidity, and tragedy.
 
But, man, oh man, those shattering moments, delivered by art, music, beauty and love, this life reveals. It just might be worth the risk of sticking around for a while longer to see what shakes out.

Many other Tamils, especially in Tamil Nadu, India, join hands in this humanitarian struggle. Together, they have achieved a great deal of real assistance and some recognition for their kinsmen and cousins albeit no government has yet to respond with consequent solidarity for this maligned people. The potential potency of a true humanitarian, internationalist United Nations yet once again has been left unfulfilled in the interests of monetary and territorial profits.

Tamils began fleeing Sri Lanka in large numbers following the second pogrom, in 1977. Led by Buddhist monks, Sinhalese mobs destroyed many of their homes and shops and murdered up to 300. This was the second of four pogroms Tamils suffered between 1956 and 1983, in which as many as 5000 Tamils were murdered; some were set aflame alive.

The first Tamils fled to nearby Tamil Nadu where 60 million Indian Tamils live. These Sri Lanka Tamils have been poorly treated by Indian authorities. Activism led by Tamil Nadu Tamils has been based on emotional connections they have to the Sri Lankan Tamils. It peaked in May 2009 but has been sporadic since then. There are signs of revival of support for the Tamils generally among the educated class based on rational evaluation of the situation for Tamils in the island.

Most Tamils migrated beyond Asia, spreading throughout the British Commonwealth, non-English speaking European countries, and the United States. Today, there are about one million S.L. Tamils living in 20 countries or more. Their relatives back home number around 2.5 million.

Migrants and refugees did not abandon their kinsmen. Most send remittances and many helped finance liberation movements, including the armed forces of the LTTE (Tigers). They established grass roots support committees in the countries where they migrated.

One of the oldest Tamil associations in the Diaspora in the United States is Ilankai Tamil Sangam. It has a continuous history of support activities since its founding in 1977, and is now conducting a boycott campaign of Sri Lanka garments, which accounts for a quarter of foreign currency earnings. As it writes, “We know that by linking employment of Sinhalese to the human rights of Tamils we can help secure a just future for our people.”

Another U.S. group, Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), formed in 2008, hired US attorney Bruce Fein, a conservative Ronald Reagan government official, to file human rights violation charges against Sri Lanka’s defense minister, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, also a U.S. citizen, and General Sarath Fonseca, former head of the government’s war machine and also holder of United States residency.

TAG has also filed a lawsuit in US District Court in Washington for $30 million in damages on behalf of three Tamil plaintiffs, who had family members killed by the S.L. Army.

A separate legal attempt was made in the Supreme Court to annul part of the Patriotic Act that forbids offering assistance to terrorist groups, so defined by the US government. A Sri Lankan Tamil, US citizen, and lawyer, Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran, argued that supplying a liberation force, the Tigers, with “material support” is in keeping with First Amendment rights of free speech. He so contends because of perpetual discrimination by the Sinhalese governments against the Tamil population allows them no alternative but to take up arms, in order to win their rights.

On June 22, 2010, the Supreme Court denied Rudrakumaran’s case. It found, instead, that laws against “terrorism” have priority over free speech, which, for the first time, the Supreme Court has now partially criminalized.

Tamil groups in many other countries are active in boycotting Sri Lanka products—such as Act Now in Britain—and in filing lawsuits against Sri Lankan diplomats for war crimes.

Since April 2004 when the present president Mahinda Rajapaksa became prime minister, at least 34 journalists have been murdered: three Sinhalese, 29 Tamils.

Fifty-five media workers have fled into exile in that time span. Towards the end of the war, some started Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS), an action group of journalists, writers, artists and human rights defenders campaigning for democracy, human rights and media freedom in Sri Lanka.

Organizing Internationally

Three international organizations have started up since the end of the war with the common goal of offering hope for Sri Lanka Tamils back at home and in the Diaspora by struggling abroad for sovereignty in Sri Lanka—Global Tamil Forum (GTF), Council of Eelam Tamil in Europe (CETE), Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE). Although they all started after the defeat and collapse of the LTTE, the Sri Lanka government considers them all to be Tiger “terrorist” followers.

The GTF has committees in 14 countries. The first ones started in Britain and Canada in the summer of 2009. The GTF held its inauguration in London’s House of Commons, February 24, 2010. Several British government officials and parliamentarians were present. Foreign Secretary David Milliband spoke. He suggested that Sri Lanka embark on a “genuinely inclusive political process. Other Establishment politicians from Europe, the US, and South Africa attended as well. This event followed the EU decision to suspend preferential trade benefits (GSP) for the Sri Lankan government in protest to its brutal abuses against Tamils.

The Forum’s leader is SJ Emmanuel, a Catholic priest and follower of Gandhi. The Forum’s vision is to seek self-determination for S.L. Tamils using principles of democracy and non-violence.

Global Tamil Forum projects include boycotts of Sri Lanka products, and aiding Internally Displaced Persons (IDP). They estimate that there are at least 80,000 Tamil widows, and many thousands of orphans. It is endeavoring to sponsor at least 1000 war orphans and provide general relief for those most affected by the war. The GTF also seeks justice for the perpetrators of genocide and war crimes. They work with the Center for War Victims and Human Rights.

In an interview with a leading participant at the inauguration, a Tamil scholar and political activist, he acknowledged that by obtaining tentative political backing by Western government officials and parliamentarians can be tricky. None of these governments have forthrightly aided the Tamil cause for self-determination or its people in any material way. Since the end of the war, U.S., EU and UN leaders have made noises about protecting Tamils’ “human rights” but have not condemned Sri Lanka or brought anyone before the International Criminal Court, as they often do to leaders of governments that they oppose. No, as I have shown in other writings herein, these Western regimes have been involved with the Sri Lankan Sinhalese governments’ genocide since the beginning in the 1950s. So, what is to be gained?
“Believe me no Tamil activist thinks of supporting US or British imperialism, just as we did not support British colonialism,” he said. “But we have to present out case wherever we can, and hope that by bringing as much pressure as we can we will one day bear fruit. In politics, there are always contradictions. Most of us are more inclined toward the liberation struggles of other peoples, such as those countries in Latin America struggling free of the United States’ `backyard´ dominance. Ironically, some of these countries have sided politically with the Sri Lankan government. I think this is misguided, but they probably have done so because they see US-EU pointing a ‘human rights’ finger hypocritically at Sri Lanka leaders. And then there is China interests over there, too.”

(The United States has invaded 66 countries 159 times since the end of World War Two. All these military operations have been aggressive—some minor, some major: Vietnam, Latin America, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The US has directly murdered several millions of people in military operations. Through wars and sanctions, such as that against Iraq following its first military intervention, millions more have starved to death.)

Shortly after the GFT was launched, Tamil activists in Norway and Switzerland began the Council of Eelam Tamil in Europe. They were soon joined by activists in Germany, France and Italy. They see themselves as activists, first and foremost. Many are second generation Tamils in the Diaspora.

In Switzerland, Tamil CETE activists ran for election in a national assembly to form Canton based councils. They see this as a way of uniting and strengthening the Eezham Tamil Diaspora, and putting a separate state in northern-eastern Sri Lanka on the agenda. Sixteen thousand eligible Tamil voters in Switzerland, 70% of the total number, held a referendum in January 2010. Ninety-nine percent voted yes for an independent Tamil Eelam.

Four European CETE councils, joined by Tamils Against Genocide, are filing war crimes charges against Sri Lanka diplomats sent to European countries.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) agreed to take up the case against the appointment of ex-SLA commander Jagath Dias as a diplomat to the Sri Lanka embassy in Germany. “SCET, the Norwegian Council of Eelam Tamils (NCET) and the US based NGO, Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), had filed an application to the ECHR in July 2010 charging the German government for violating EU Rights conventions by accepting a Sri Lankan military commander, Major General Jagath Dias, an accused in the war crimes,” wrote Tamil Net.

One representative of the Swiss CETE, Lathan Suntharalingam, a young activist and member of the Swiss Parliament for the Socialist Party, told me, “We Tamils have to work hard to bring our cause before the world. We are very sad and confused after the defeat in 2009. We need to combine all our forces and struggles: Tamils, Arabs, Latin Americans…We need to help each other, because we have common problems and goals.”

A prominent activist in the Diaspora, Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran, who earned a law degree in immigration rights and constitutional law from Harvard University, saw the need for international representation of Tamil rights to sovereignty. He took the most ambitious initiative to begin the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam in the United States and throughout the Diaspora. Rudra, as he is known, called together Tamils living in many countries, mainly scholars, to a conference in Switzerland, in August 2009. Two more international meetings were held before the TGTE was officially inaugurated. Consensus was reached: a) armed struggle was defeated and is not now possible; b) the fight for sovereignty must continue.

An advisory committee of 11 persons was selected to draw up a strategy for the formation of a “Provisional Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam”. “This Government will lobby for the support of the international community and people to find a political solution to the Tamil national question on the basis of nationhood, a homeland and the right to self-determination.”

The TGTE is not to be confused with a “government in exile”, as there had been no independent state with a government that later sought relocation. It will be formed like a transnational corporation or NGO, and will campaign through political and diplomatic channels. The real government will be established in the homeland when that is physically possible.

The traditional homeland of Tamils is swarming with military personnel and camps, effectively an occupied territory. Systematic gerrymandering of electoral districts occurs. Four Tamil members of parliament, representing Tamil political parties, have been murdered under Rajapakse’s regime. Murderers of Tamils whether military personnel or police or civilians enjoy full impunity. The state prohibits equal rights for Tamils with the Sinhalese. In such circumstances, international law recognizes a right to self-determination and a right to secession. And when powerful nations back a people’s demand for sovereignty, such as in Kosovo, they get it.

TGTE strategy is to work with all existing local, national and international Tamil organizations in the Diaspora, and to create a power centre for diplomacy with all governments possible. It also seeks to work in partnership with Tamil leadership inside Sri Lanka but has not been able to establish ties, at least not officially, given the belligerent nature of the S.L. government.

The advisors’ reported on January 2010. They said that a transnational government is “rationalized on the lack of political space for the Tamils in the island of Sri Lanka to articulate their political aspirations and realize their right to self-determination and exercise their sovereignty.”

They devised an elaborate democratic procedure to elect delegates where Tamils live in the Diaspora, in order to shape a Transnational Constitutional Assembly, appoint a cabinet, and draft a constitution. One of the main provisions in a constitution will assure the special rights of Muslim Tamils, “who seek their identity based on Islamic religious faith” and are Tamil-speaking people.

The report also recommended a monitoring body to protect the guiding principles and ensure that the Transnational Government “does not act in a manner contrary to the Guiding Principles”: 

 

1. Commitment to achieve Eelam, an independent, sovereign State—nationhood, homeland and right to self-determination.
2. Tamil Eelam will be a secular state.
3. TGTE shall assist in establishing health facilities in the homeland, homes and refuges for those affected by the war; promote cultural activities stressing Eelam Tamil distinctiveness. Much of this work will have to be done indirectly as the TGTE cannot be in Sri Lanka.
4. Promote education in the homeland.
5. Promote economic welfare.
6. Conduct foreign relations through lobbying.
7. Seek prosecution of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
8. Protect the equality of women and all Tamils.
9. Provide welfare of families of martyrs, former combatants and families affected by the war. One practical project is to establish monuments for martyrs in the Diaspora since their memorials and graves have been destroyed by the Sri Lankan government.

The advisors established procedures to elect 115 Elected Representatives (ER) by direct ballot where there are contests—otherwise the sole candidate for an area automatically became an ER—in the main population centers (16 countries), and 20 Delegates to represent countries or regions where conducting elections is not feasible because of small or diffuse Tamil populations, or there exists difficulty of access. Some Delegates could be non-Eelam Tamils coming from India, primarily.

The numbers of ER and Delegates is proportional to the numbers of Tamils. For instance, Canada has the largest number, 25, to represent about a quarter million Tamils, followed by the UK with 20, for some 200,000 Tamils.

Those wishing to vote in the TGTE Constituent Assembly must be 17 years old or older and connected to Eelam Tamil culture by descent, marriage or adoption.

In the spring of 2010, elections were held in 12 countries. In some cases, the proposed candidate met no competition and so there was no election. The fact that only about 5% of the Diaspora, around 35-40,000, voted does not indicate a lack of enthusiasm since in some cases there was no need for an election. Nevertheless, participation was lower than hoped for.

Fifty-six of the 89 ER and Delegates elected gathered, in Philadelphia, to officially form the Transnational Constituent Assembly, on May 17-19, 2010. Not all countries or regions had held elections. Their spots will be filled in time.

On June 17, following the first sitting of the Assembly of the TGTE, Rudrakumaran wrote the following in a news release.
“The fact that the first session took place in Philadelphia at the same site where the US Declaration of Independence was promulgated and the US Constitution was drafted symbolized, to the world, our passion for freedom. While the Government of Sri Lanka proclaimed that [it] crushed the Tamils’ struggle for freedom…we demonstrated our thirst for freedom to the world through the setting up of the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam. The manner in which we linked elected members of TGTE situated at venues in London and Geneva…portends the transnational character of the struggle we intend to take further.

The first session of the Assembly saw the election of an interim executive committee along with several action committees in order to address the immediate concerns until the time a formal constitution of the TGTE is drafted and ratified.”

The TGTE Assembly met again between September 20 and October 1, in the United Nations Plaza Hotel, New York City. Representatives in N.Y. were joined via teleconference by others from London and Paris. They ratified its Constitution.

“The opening plenary was addressed by former U.S. Attorney General Mr. Ramsey Clark, Deputy Chief Minister of Penang (Malaysia) Professor Ramasamy, Professor David L. Philips from Columbia University and who also served as UN and U.S. State Department adviser, and Mr. Ali Beydoun, Executive Director of UNROW Human Rights Impact Litigation Clinic of the American University’s Washington College of Law. UNROW recently published a report on Sri Lanka War Crimes which was submitted to the UN.

After the opening session the Assembly turned to the challenging task of discussing the draft constitution. They debated and settled on a parliamentary model. The Parliament decided that the head of the government would be the Prime Minister. They also chose to create three Deputy Prime Minister posts. The Deputy Prime Ministers will be joined in the cabinet by seven other ministers.

The TGTE Parliament will have a bicameral legislature. It will consist of the Parliament of elected representatives and the Senate. The Senate will serve as an advisory body as well as provide expertise. The Parliament also codified the recall mechanism of the elected members.

After the Assembly ratified the constitution, and unanimously elected Mr. Pon Balarajan from Canada as the Speaker of the Parliament, and Ms. Suganya Puthirasigamany from Switzerland as the Deputy Speaker. The Parliament unanimously elected Mr. Visvanathan Rudrakumaran as the first Prime Minister of the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam.

On November 3, the TGTE announced its first cabinet. Of the 10 ministers and 10 deputy ministers, five are women. The Secretariat is in Geneva. The ministries are: finance; welfare; education-culture-health; internal affairs; information; political & foreign affairs; welfare of women, children & elders; economic affairs-environment & development; investigation of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes; and IDPs, Refugees and POWs.

The cabinet meets every 14 days. It will be issuing national membership cards and a quarterly journal, plus an international website.

On the foreign relations front, the TGTE feel a victory for its recognition by being sent an invitation from the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement (SPLM) leadership to be official guests of the new nation-in-formation, the Republic of Southern Sudan, in the July 2011 inaugurating ceremony.

In another area of rebellion and repression, the TGTE called upon the United Nations to protect Libyan civilians, as well as their own people. On February 25, 2011, this statement was issued:

Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) today urged the United Nations not to fail in protecting Libyan civilians like it failed to protect Sri Lankan civilians in 2009, when around 60,000 Tamil civilians were killed. The failure of the international community to take concrete actions to protect civilians in Sri Lanka has given the green light to regimes around the world that they can also massacre civilians without any fear of consequences.

What we are witnessing today in Libya is the result of indifference the international community exhibited during the massacre in Sri Lanka and not brining Sri Lankan leaders to face war crimes charges”, said Political and Foreign Minister of Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam, Mr. Thanikasalam Thayaparan.

UN should take immediate steps to bring Sri Lanka leaders to Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, and War Crimes to show its resolve to hold those committing mass killings.

Conclusion

Among the TGTE challenges and weaknesses, which I see and have discussed somewhat with key participants, are:

1) The need to raise a treasury while avoiding the historic problem of Diaspora contributions being associated with the armed struggle of the Tigers, seen by many Tamils as having succumbed to acts of terrorism and, of course, being condemned as terrorists by many of the governments that TGTE is trying to persuade to assist it. So, it is the most active members who are paying for travel and other expenses. For now, they will not ask Tamils for money, in general. Perhaps some NGOs and grass roots groups might raise money. They must be careful about choosing their NGOs, as many are paid for by governments with special political interests—NGO imperialists, some call them.

2) TGTE must be careful about how it conducts its lobbying with governments of the “international community”, a common reference to the US and its big capitalist allies. This is a reference to what I raised earlier regarding the Global Tamil Forum. In this context, it is noted that while the SPLM has a legitimate demand for a separate state, it allowed itself to be supported economically, militarily and politically by the United States.

3) While practically every Tamil in the Diaspora still wants a sovereign nation inside the Sri Lanka island, there are strategic and tactical differences. The TGTE takes up where the LTTE ended but by using non-violent tactics. Not all in the Diaspora have yet admitted that the LTTE will not return, or that another armed struggle is impossible or unnecessary. Most GTF members support the TGTE, as do many in the CETE. But some activists wait in the background before deciding to cooperate with the TGTE; a few are against it.

While Lathan Suntharalingam is skeptical, he did help organize a Country Working Group and an election for the TGTE in Switzerland.

“We supported the election, in April 2010, for delegates to the Constitutional Assembly. I am a bit confused about it, though. I wish more action. The TGTE needs more time. I see us getting well together in two to three years.”

4) Finally, how can the TGTE become a true representative for the Tamils in Sri Lanka? How can it get feedback and backing from this frightened and suffering population? I see a related problem. All ministers are scholars or businessmen while most Tamils at home and in the Diaspora are workers. This too has to be adjusted as the credibility and trust people hold towards the government improves over time.

Meanwhile Israel, contrary to international law, continues to build settlements and steal Palestinian land, in a colonisation with ethnic cleansing, as it has done for more than a hundred years. The politics of genocide against the Palestinians have actually been facilitated by the UN suggestion for partition in 1947 and the Oslo Agreement in 1993 that launched the idea of a two-state solution.

Support for the idea of a two-state solution is dwindling among the Palestinians. Fatah, the movement that seized power through a coup after Hamas had won the election, has the two-state idea on its programme, but is losing supporters since the latest events. Hamas, formerly a bitter enemy of the idea, in attempt to achieve agreement, has suggested a provisional two-state solution connected to the UN Resolution 194 concerning the Palestinian refugees’ inalienable right to return. A right that Israel categorically denies as it is incompatible with the preservation of Israel as a Jewish state, as its Jewish majority would be threatened for demographic reasons.

Despite this, energetic efforts are presently being made to revive the Idea of a two-state solution from an unexpected corner: Latin America! During a short space of time, as if under starter’s orders, Brazil, Argentine, Bolivia, Uruguay, Guyana and (reserving opinion re the borders) Chile and Peru have hurried to assist at the request of the Palestinian coup regime. These countries “recognise” – without a prior peace agreement – the idea of a Palestinian state alongside Israel with the armistice line from 1967 as the border. Cuba and Venezuela have done something similar, also the former Soviet Union, but much earlier on.

Headed by France, the EU is also for a “recognition” of Palestine when “appropriate”, meaning when the US and Israel so wish. The Norwegian foreign minister declared Norway’s enthusiastic wish to help the Israel puppet, Abbas, to construct a regular state apparatus for the new “democracy” alongside Israel.

Israel rejected the initiative from the Latin American countries as meaningless. The US has followed suite. Israel wishes to seize at least the whole of Palestine – but without the Palestinians.

The two-state solution is destructive

Those who advocate the idea of two states may applaud the recycled initiative from the Latin American states. Perhaps their governments wish to demonstrate their independence from the US and Israel by flagging their sympathy for the stateless Palestinians. But the action is destructive for at least these following reasons:

1. The expelled Palestinians will be hindered from returning, which means that the ongoing politics of genocide are accepted both by the Palestinians and the international community. Israel’s 2 million Palestinians, discriminated against and threatened with deportation, are left to their fate. International law is put aside. The core reason for the conflict remains unresolved, thus new wars can be expected.

2. Just like other UN states that defer to the US and Israel’s agenda, the Latin American countries close their eyes to the fact that the Palestinians are deeply divided into two hostile factions that have different opinions about the two-state idea. Dialogue with only one side will of course increase the division.

3. After winning an election, acknowledged by international observers, with a substantial majority, Hamas was entrusted by the Palestinian people to appoint a government. This has been sabotaged by Fatah in collaboration with the US and Israel together with other western states who do not accept the election results. The brazen act of taking Fatah’s side in this situation is also hypocritical, as it counteracts the democracy these countries say they advocate. Emphasising this is the fact that the Fatah leadership receives arms and military training from Israel in order to fight Hamas.

4. There is no evidence that Israel will stop the successful tactics of exploiting negotiations to steal more land, and continue the ethnic cleansing and the genocide.

Those who are presently trying to achieve new negotiations for two states carefully avoid stating an opinion about the core question in the Middle East, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, which has been going on since 1948. A treaty that aims for just and lasting peace must first and foremost solve the core question of the conflict, or everything else rests on shifting ground.

It is the expulsion of the Palestinians from their country and the theft of their land that has created the preconditions for the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, with a comfortable Jewish majority. A state that has no determined borders and that forever yearns to expand.

What is a “Jewish state”?

The two-state solution means, in fact, a Palestinian state alongside a Jews-only state, other interpretations are meaningless. This is understood when we study the two meanings of the term “Jewish state” that can be discussed, namely one according to the UN partition plan from 1947 and one according to Zionism’s definition.

A prerequisite for the UN partition plan was that the demographic relationship between Jews and Arabs could only be changed if both parties were willing. Other preconditions were determined borders, equality before the law, respect for land and property and more. Israel has ignored all these demands, thus, through its actions, rendering the resolution obsolete.¹ The fact that the partition plan is indifferent to people’s right to self-determination and has never been acknowledged by the Arab states in question and the Palestinians’ representatives, reinforces this point.²

The sole remaining meaning of the term “Jewish state” is thus the Zionists’. It considers that the state exists exclusively for the world’s Jews, but not for the original inhabitants, the Palestinians. A state territory of this nature can never be other than colonial and racist.

Palestine is an Arab country, predominantly Muslim, which has been colonised. With inevitable logic, therefore, all Arab and Muslim resistance in the Middle East must be crushed, and regimes bribed into loyalty. To this end, Israel uses its influence in the US for war policies that spread in ever widening circles from Iraq and Afghanistan, to Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan and soon the whole of Iran. American soldiers, and those of other countries – not Israelis – sacrifice their lives for Israel’s interests and the price is death of millions of civilians and devastated countries. Following on this, the US economy and reputation are in continual decline. Israel on the other hand is more than happy with the result in Iraq.³

Those opposing South Africa’s apartheid system never proposed a “white state” alongside a “black state”. To this day, we would see that as morally unsound, ridiculous and not in the interests of the original black population.

It may seem slightly strange therefore that so many international protesters against Israel’s apartheid system are in favour of a “Palestinian state” alongside a “Jewish state”. It is not unreasonable to ask the question if this is solely political theatre and who the director might be. The Latin American states in question are born out of freedom fights against colonialism. Several of them are considered to be part of the anti-imperialistic avant-garde. They should not have fallen into this trap.

The Refugee Resolution guides the way

The UN resolution 194 from 1949 concerning refugees’ right to return to their homes is the Palestinian’s main legal instrument in their fight, with the significant supplement in resolution 3236 that the right to return is inalienable. The resolution states that its implementation is inevitable to the solution of the Palestinian question and for a just and lasting peace. Today, the UN resolution 194 is still the key⁴ to the end of the conflicts in the Middle East and a significantly less dangerous world.

In August 2008, Mahmoud Abbas, who was then still the Palestinians’ legitimate president, received an open letter signed by all of Palestine’s most important organisations: civil rights movements, institutions and parties in the ”homeland”, including Fatah and Hamas, together with refugee organisations. The letter highlights the conflict’s absolute core question, that of the Palestinian refugees and their inalienable right to return to their homes. This document must be judged as including the most important guidelines upon which the Palestinian people in the “homeland” and in exile have been able to agree.⁵

Another fundamental document for the Palestinians’ way forward is that covering the demands of a boycott, isolation and sanctions against Israel (BDS) from June 9th 2005. This document also focuses on the rights of the refugees.⁶

The best way to show solidarity, and support the Palestinians is therefore – quite simply – in different ways, to work for the boycott of Israel that they themselves advocate and the right to return according to the UN decision. An initiative to expel Israel from the UN because of its refusal to obey resolutions, especially 194, would also be suitable.⁷

1. Virginia Tilley: Hamas and Israel´s “Right to Exist.”
2. UN Partition Plan.
3. Israel: We Destroyed Iraq.. Iraq must Stay Divided and Isolated… The Oil of Northern Iraq will Flow into Israel!
4. Dr. Salman Abu Sitta: It’s time for those who hold keys to their homes to rise up.
5. Open letter to President Mahmoud Abbas.
6. Palestinian United Call for BDS against Israel.
7. Revoking Israel’s UN Membership?

Presented with this story are petroleum industry concessions maps   for North Africa that people might want to ponder in between the Western propaganda on Libya. Amidst the full-court press of propaganda presented by the western media and State Department disinformation apparatus we find that Muammar Gaddafi is even accused of committing genocide against his own people. Are there double standards at work?

An original photograph; backside text reads: Al Haji Amin (centre) is introducing military senior officers to his brother Col. Gaddafi, Chairman of the Revolutionary Command of Arab republic of Libya, shortly on arrival at Gulu Airfield [northern Uganda] to perform the official handing over of aircrafts to Uganda Airforce, March 3, 1974.

From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli

On September 1, 1969 the pro-western regime that had ruled in Libya was overthrown by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and his officers. At the time, Libya was home to the largest US Air Base (Wheelus Air Base) in North Africa. Agreements between the USA and Libya signed in 1951 and 1954 granted the USAF the use of Wheelus Air Base and its El Watia gunnery range for gunnery and bombing training and for transport and bombing stopovers until 1971. During the Cold War the base was pivotal to expanding US military power under  the Strategic Air Command, and an essential base for fighter and reconnaissance missions. The Pentagon also used the base — and the remote Libyan desert — for missile launch testing: the launch area was located 15 miles east of Tripoli. Considered a ‘little America on the shores of the Mediteranean’, the base housed some 4600 US military personnel until its evacuation in 1970.

With the discovery of oil in Libya in 1959, a very poor desert country became a very rich little western protectorate. US and European companies had huge stakes in the extremely lucrative petroleum and banking sectors, but these were soon nationalized by Gaddafi. Thus Libya overnight joined the list of US ‘enemy’ or ‘rogue’ states that sought autonomy and self-determination outside the expanding sphere of western Empire. Further cementing western hatred of the new regime, Libya played a leading role of the 1973 oil embargo against the US and maintained cooperative relations with the Soviet Union. Gaddafi also reportedly channeled early oil wealth into national free health care and education.

At one time Gaddafi played around with Idi Amin, but his ties to other despots — such as Tony Blair and George H. W. Bush — are far more notable, though far less advertised. Of course, just as Gaddafi is heavily slammed and maligned — in disproportion to his actual actions — we find that Idi Amin is not the premier African terrorist he is always billed to be: Amin’s crimes pale in comparison to the current despot in power in Uganda, President-for-Life Yoweri Museveni. Remember that Gaddafi has served the prerogatives of imperialism for years, even while being presented as the world’s premier terrorist.

Like previous revolutionary figures of the 20th century such as Mao and his Little Red Book, Gaddafi followed the example of other revolutionary figures like Mao Zedong in authoring his own unique and highly idealistic political philosophy. Gaddafi’s Green Book was published in three volumes between 1975 and 1979 and, as you might expect, it is almost unknown by the western enlightened [sic] world.

Over the past four decades the US and its closest allies, including Israel and Japan, have maintained a mostly hostile relationship with Muammar Gaddafi and Libya. This relationship has included economic sanctions, covert attacks, open warfare and other actions of aggression committed by the United States. The ‘international community’ repeatedly enforced or renewed sanctions against Libya in the 1980s and 1990s.

After September 11, 2001, the US issued extensive threats and warnings against Libya to pressure it to accept US demands and collaborate in the US “War on Terror.” Since Libya was considered one of the premier ‘rogue states’ involved in ‘terrorism’ and Gaddafi was forced to concede some of his country’s independence and autonomy. After diplomatic wrangling, sanctions against Libya were dropped in 2004 in exchange for Gaddafi’s (limited) collaboration.

In 2004, during heightened western media propaganda about Libyan terrorism and Gaddafi’s supporting Al Qaeda — all kinds of disingenuous reports and outright lies — the G.W. Bush administration dropped sanctions against the regime — and paved the way for a new era in US-Libyan bilateral trade.

US officials were reportedly under pressure from multinational corporations, including big petrol companies BP, ExxonMobil, Halliburton, Chevron, Conoco and Marathon Oil, and defense giants like Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, and other corporations like Dow Chemical and Fluor. These corporations and lobbyists then formed a “trade” association, US-Libya Business Association (USLBA) in 2005 with $US 20,000 membership dues.

USLBA members lobbied the US government to protect and advance their interests in Libya, through the US government, and business executives flocked to Libya and negotiated for million or billion dollar deals. Bilateral trade with Libya totaled $2.7 billion in 2010, up from virtually nothing when sanctions were in place prior to 2004. The USLBA also lobbied on behalf of the former outlaw state of Libya and has sponsored policy conferences, briefing sessions and events featuring senior U.S. and Libyan officials.

Officials traveled to Libya for meetings with Libyan government officials, private business leaders, and representatives of American companies working in the country — leading to some of the unbridled development that was evident in Tripoli (2009).

Through the secretive Libyan Investment Authority, billions of Libya’s petrodollars were reportedly invested in US Equity and Big Banks, including JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and others, and into other private equity like the Carlyle Group — connected with Frank Carlucci, who is noted herein to be affiliated with the National Endowment for Democracy (described below).

The CIA has long wanted to eliminate and replace Muammar Gaddafi. President Reagan bombed Tripoli, killing Gaddafi’s infant daughter: the United States bombing of Libya (code-named Operation El Dorado Canyon) comprised the joint USAF, Navy, and Marines air-strikes against Libya on April 15, 1986. The US CIA brought down the Lockerbie Pan Am 103 flight over Scotland in 1988 and blamed this on Gaddafi.

Many of the top-level security documents from the Reagan Administration pertaining to Libya remain classified. These include National Security Decision Directives 16 (Economic and Security Decisions for Libya), NSDD 205a (Annex: Acting Against Libyan Support of International Terrorism), NSDD 224 (Counter-Terrorist Operations Against Libya), and NSDD 234 (Libya Policy), while even those that have been declassified are partially redacted. The George H.W. Bush NSDD 19 (US Policy Toward Libya) also remains classified.

In recent years Gaddafi has played along with the western fiction of Al-Qaeda, though it seems likely that some of the true mercenaries in Libya today are ‘Al-Qaeda’ terrorists trained by the United States to serve US interests in places like Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and now Libya. However, the CIA has always had their sights on Gaddafi.

Note the double standard in how the western press presents the accusations of Gaddafi using mercenaries, as if it is something unique to Gaddafi and Libya, and not something we ever do.

National front for the Salvation of Libya

In almost all western media accounts, the so-called “opposition” in Libya includes the unspecified, unnamed, unidentified “rebels” of the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL). These are not innocent ‘pro-democracy’ protestors who began with a ‘peaceful sit-in’ as reported by the New York Times and uncritically repeated everywhere else.

Reportage of atrocities in Darfur, Sudan (2003-20011), and Rwanda (1990-1994) was always blamed on the governments (Omar Bashir in Khartoum and Juvenal Habyarimana in Kigali) with no context to the foreign backed insurgency and intervention occurring, which in both cases involved the US, UK and Israel. Similarly, in Libya today, there is no context or history to the FNSL ‘rebels’: they are categorically presented as the good guys, no matter that they seem to have appeared out of thin air. No one explains who these people are who are cited by the New York Times or CNN or Democracy Now as sources.

Street scene in Tripoli, September 2009

The FNSL was part of the National Conference for the Libyan Opposition held in London in 2005, and British resources are being used to support the FNSL and other ‘opposition’ in Libya. The FNSL was actually formed in October 1981 in Sudan under Colonel Jaafar Nimieri — the US puppet dictator who was openly known to be a Central Intelligence Agency operative, and who ruled Sudan ruthlessly from 1977 to 1985. The FNSL held its national congress in the USA in July 2007. Reports of ‘atrocities’ and civilian deaths are being channeled into the western press from operations in Washington DC, and the opposition FNSL is reportedly organizing resistance and military attacks from both inside and outside Libya.

Italy and France are also said to be backing these opposition groups, as the Italian and French oil companies AGIP and ELF and others seek to chop off and eat their pieces of the predatory pie. The US, Britain and Israel seek to insure control of the petroleum sector in advance of competitor corporations from other European countries.

Many of the petroleum concessions in Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Egypt appear (the map is 15 years old) to be held by state-owned oil companies. The US/European/Israeli nexus seeks to dislodge state-ownership — to whatever extent it actually exists — and dislodge any Chinese workers or Chinese companies involved in the oil exploitation, and replace these with western companies and western agents.

National Endowment for (non) Democracy

In 1983, the Pentagon, USAID, US State Department, and the CIA were all involved in the creation and implementation of ‘Project Democracy’ –based on National Security Decision Directive 77 (NSDD 77) — and this led to the creation of the National Endowment for Democracy.

After that, some of the ‘softer’ tactics used in covert interventions were shifted away from the CIA and onto the NED, whose involvement with covert operations and foreign interventions are nonetheless well-established.

A ‘soft’ intervention CIA front, the National Endowment for Democracy has been deeply involved in Libya along with the CIA fronted Freedom House (under their Blue Umbrella program and others). These entities have backed ‘opposition’, supported propaganda campaigns and so-called ‘pro-democracy’ movements, and are known to be involved with backing armed insurgents and interventions.

Libyan currency 2009

NED works its overt intelligence sector magic through four organizations under its (own) umbrella: National democratic Institute; International Republican Institute, Center for Private Enterprise, and the AFL-CIO’s American Center for International Labor Solidarity.  NED is closely aligned with US foreign policy interests and achieves its mission through the revolving doors between US Government and the NED Board of Directors.

Some of these NED directors include: former US Secretaries of State, Henry Kissinger (Nixon) and Madeleine Albright (Clinton), former US Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci (Reagan), former National Security Council Chair Zbigniew Brzezinski (Carter), former NATO Supreme Allied Command in Europe, General Wesley K. Clark (Clinton), and the current head of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz (George W. Bush).

Freedom House is supportive of NED programs but has been around since its creation by Elanor Roosevelt and they have been very active against Libya. Freedom House is funded by, amongst others, UNILEVER Corporation, USAID, and the US Information Agency (USIA). Freedom House, in alliance with USIA, has provided covert and overt “Radio Free” disinformation programs all over the world since at least 1952: e.g. Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia. The USIA is directly involved with US Army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group in planning and coordinating major military operations (e.g. the Gulf War and the UNITAF intervention in Somalia).

Past and present Freedom House trustees include: former CIA director R. James Woosley; former national security adviser (at the time of the 1996 US invasion of Congo-Zaire) Anthony Lake; Harvard professor Samuel Huntington; UNILEVER executive Ned Bandler; CIA insider Andrew Young; former Joseph Mobutu confidant and national security insider Jeanne J. Kirkpatrick; former NED director and International Crisis Group trustee Zbigniew Brzezinski; USAID intelligence operative J. Brian Atwood (USAID administrator who oversaw the US-backed genocide against millions of Hutu refugees in Congo-Zaire, 1996-1998) and many more.

Freedom House is also very likely affiliated with the phantom US Office of Strategic Information (OSI), formed after September 11, 2001. OSI is said to have been reorganized, with all its original functions reassigned to the Office of Global Communications, Information Awareness Office (IAO), and the newly reactivated Counter-Disinformation/Misinformation Team (Counter-Information Team). However, then-Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld issued statements affirming that the OSI’s operations would continue.

Banner mural on a building in downtown Tripoli, September 2009

Rogue State Painted with Blatant Propaganda

In the ABC LITELINE report “FNSL Leader Speaks from Washington,” we find the Washington monument in the background for an interview with an Arab agent being used by the western propaganda system as a credible source — but with zero explanations of who he is or why his claims might be false.

FNSL operative Irahim Sahad speaks freely, making any claim he likes, and nothing he says is challenged or counter-balanced. Sahad suggests that the UN Security Council MUST be convened to stop the ‘war crimes and ‘mass murder’ and ‘genocide’ being committed by Gaddafi against his own people. Ibrahim Sahad’s bias is unveiled by such statements as “The UN Security Council was convened when just one man was killed in Lebabon — so it should be convened to address the most brutal use of live ammunition, heavy arms and mercenaries.” The claim employs a double-standard, saying in short that Lebanese lives are worth more than Libyan, which is not at all the case, and that the United Nations takes serious one man’s life in Lebanon, so they should take far more serious the monumental loss of life [claimed] in Libya.

Here are some of the media’s rallying cries making headlines everywhere the English language is used:

• Gaddafi killing his own people!
• West worried that Gaddafi may use Nerve Gas!
• Heavy Weaponry Used Against Civilians!
• Heavy Arms Used in Libyan Crackdown!
• Gaddafi Committing Crimes Against Humanity!

The death tolls in Iraq, Afghanistan and Congo-Zaire — by US/NATO/ Israeli forces — far surpass anything that might have occurred in Libya. Meanwhile, most ‘news’ on Libya is based on false accusations and false assertions — such as the THREAT of nerve gas being used.

However, just prior to the dropping of sanctions in 2004 it was established that Washington and London were grossly exaggerating claims of Gaddafi’s development of nuclear and chemical weapons. The western propaganda about Weapons of Mass Destruction in Libya had the same empty ring as the lies about Weapons of Mass Destruction used to justify the war against Iraq.

In Afghanistan the US is using weapons of mass destruction and has been since the invasion of 2001: these include phosgene and uranium weapons. A deeper issue might be the loss of certain nuclear weapons, by the west, as claimed by sources in London, which reportedly went missing from US/NATO stocks. Claims are that these weapons made their way into the hands of British arms dealer John Bredenkamp, a long time crony of the Robert Mugabe gang in Zimbabwe and war lord involved in Congo-Zaire, and that they may have been sold to Libya, Yemen or North Korea.

Muammar Gaddafi Sides with the Empire?

“[T]he fundamental problem and issue before the people in the region is that the US rulers seek imperial control and imposition of semi-colonial country-selling regimes,” reports Ralph Schoenman, in ‘US Imperialism Against Democratic ME.’ “The more autocratic and brutal, the better from the point of the US imperialism that is unrelenting history. Every time the population is given the opportunity to shape its own destiny, to seek its national independence, to seek its own control over its own resources, to seeks its own sovereignty and determination of its own future, that is incompatible with the US imperialism.”

When Barack Obama was accepted by the US people as the new president, Gaddafi praised Obama and described Obama’s White House house-sitting gig as “a victory against racism,” and he urged the first Black U.S. president “to lead his country boldly and with integrity.”

“The Black people’s struggle has made tremendous advances against racism in America,” Gaddafi said. “It was God who created color. Today President Obama, son of a Kenyan father, a true son of Africa, has made it in the United States of America.”

At a speech he gave in his private tent in Tripoli in September 2008, Gaddafi rambled and muddled and zipped his all-over-the-place speech up as quick as he began it. Is he a desert mystic? Did he write the infamous Green Book or was it ghost-written? Are his sometimes rambling speeches emblematic of his propensity to try to please, to do what he likes, to be careful not to say the wrong thing, while being unable to remain silent when the hypocrisies of the west are (or were) thrown up in his face?

The Green Book says that workers should be involved and self-employed, and that the land must be of those who work it and those who live in the house. And power shall be exercised by the people directly, without intermediaries, without politicians, through popular congresses and committees, where the whole population decides the fundamental issues of the district, city and country. These are fighting words to predatory international capitalism.

When Gaddafi bowed to Western demands in 2004, it was most likely in part due to the incredible alignment of forces against Libya. Gaddafi and the Libyan government, and governments of other countries, will agree to a lot of imperialist dictates to avoid having a war launched against their country and to allow the people to still enjoy some decent standard of living and peaceful lives. Gaddafi played along with the West’s moral righteousness for “the war on terror,” knowing that he didn’t have much choice. His opening to western interests made no difference in the end, as too many forces have desired his destruction for far too long. Now that time has come: this is no ‘popular revolution’ sweeping Libya.

Pentagon Invasion Already Underway

The US will use any propaganda necessary to whip up American fervor over Gaddafi and justify Pentagon or MI6 or NATO operations. US and British warships sit off the coast of Libya — and they don’t sit there idly. The imposition of a ‘no-fly’ zone means that US/NATO plannes can do as they like, with the understanding that what we are really talking about are possible bombing and fighter sorties against Libya.

US troops have already moved ashore in Libya, joining the ‘opposition’ and ‘rebel’ forces in ‘rebel’ controlled territories. The US, France and Britain have already set up Bases in Libya.

The recent report noted that British and US special forces entered Libyan port cities of Benghazi and Toburk on February 23 and 24.

US covert operatives have been on the ground for weeks, and probably much longer than that, whether they have entered by sea (SEALS) or by way of Niger, where the US has openly published information about its covert operations. (See, for example, the travelology reports by former U.S. Special Forces now ‘journalist’ Robert Kaplan in America’s African Rifles a Pentagon massaged and approved propaganda feature in the pro-war Atlantic Monthly). Any opportunity to attack, destabilize, invade will be exploited by the Pentagon.

Of course, as this is written the US media is preparing the ground for the English-news consuming masses to see the Pentagon invasion as a “humanitarian” mission in Libya. There is nothing humanitarian about the Pentagon, and there has never been.

It’s Not Only the Oil, Stupid

Using state-of-the-art satellite remote sensing, the western powers have certainly mapped the mineral deposits that lie beneath the sands of the Libyan desert. For example, Canada’s Barrick Gold has for years had concessions in Niger and Mali — this is the corporation affiliated with former US President George Herbert Walker Bush, former US Senator Howard Baker and former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney — and Libya has a huge landmass with massive untapped mineral potential that goes way beyond the known petroleum deposits.

Another strategic geopolitical concern of the western powers is the protection and control of the massive nuclear (uranium) resources both inside Libya and nearby. France and Canada had already signed memorandums (circa 2007-2008) with Libya to explore and exploit uranium in Libya.

France’s entire nuclear weapons complex (and massive nuclear power industry) revolves around uranium extracted from Agadez and Arlit in northern Niger and it was built, over the past 50 years, out of the blood, seat and tears of the Nigerienne people. Japanese companies have been extracting uranium out of Niger through the Overseas Uranium Resources Development Corporation (OURD), in cooperation with U.S., Israeli, German and French corporations. In 2008, France and former colony Algeria signed defense and civil nuclear power accords, including cooperation in research, training, technology transfer and the exploration and production of uranium, all of interest to French nuclear giant Areva. Canadian and Australian corporations are also mining in Libya’s other southern neighbor, Burkina Faso. And yet, unlike Libya, where the people have seen some benefits from the extraction of wealth from their land, Niger remains the second poorest country in the world and Burkina Faso is close behind.

Russia and Ukraine had also signed memorandums with Libya regarding uranium exploration and development. However, China intends to quadruple its uranium consumption and China’s largest nuclear power corporation China National Nuclear Corp, has signed an agreement with China-Africa Development Fund to jointly develop uranium resources in Africa. Western nuclear corporations aim to monopolize Libya’s uranium sector and exclude China and Russia from the exploration and development — so they can build the nuke plants themselves and sell uranium to their Asian competitors.

Egypt
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The Desert Mystic

 

Libya is a country of approximately 6 million people, having a huge geographical area but low population density. Claims that Gaddafi has uplifted his people over the course of his 40 year dictatorship are questionable. Supporters claim that poverty is low and enemies that poverty is high throughout the country. However, in Tripoli in September 2009 there were the obvious signs of capitalism: overcrowding, traffic, poverty, pollution and destruction of nature. There was also an element of fear visible in people’s faces.

It is completely hypocritical of citizens of the United States to speak of the outrage of ‘poverty’ abroad when that poverty is so often the result of US militarization, unjust trade, and plundering entities like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Further, some of the worst poverty in the world can be found in US cities like Gary, Indiana and on Native American reservations like Pine Ridge. Hillary Clinton complaints about Muammar Gaddafi are really just a projection of her shadow — a long, dark shadow steeped in bloodshed and deception — and another example of the hypocrisy on Libya.

Gaddafi’s Green Book and the ‘Third Universal Theory’ it propounds are worth reading. Had it been written by most anyone else who is opposed to the expansion of western empire with all its horrors, it would be more widely appreciated. The book addresses the falsification of democracy and the proliferation of organized criminal gangs — like the Republicans and Democrats that call themselves parties of and for the US people.

Gaddafi has funded Pan-African organizations and individuals, some of whom have very noble missions and serve to challenge the downtrodden, while he has also funded some armed factions involved in unjust wars or destabilizations. Gaddafi also supports one state in Palestine with equal rights for everyone, and he has spoken forcefully about the unjust war against the Palestinians by Israel. Gaddafi has funded Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam (this is a value neutral comment by this white author).

Gaddafi also funded Jean Pieerre Bemba and the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC), the ‘rebellion’ [sic] that was also backed by Yoweri Museveni and allied with Rwandan ‘rebel’ forces (Congolese Rally for Democracy) backed by Paul Kagame, and these forces were responsible for a very definite genocide in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Congo-Zaire). Bemba is on trial at the ICC for war crimes committed in the Central African Republic.

Human Rights Watch has reported that international arms dealer Victor Bout illegally shipped weapons into Congo-Zaire, picking them up in Libya and delivering them to Rwandan Hutu forces. However, Human Rights Watch is deeply compromised when it comes to reporting and not reporting the facts — or selectively reporting them — on Central Africa. If Gaddafi did supply or facilitate the provision of arms to Rwandan Hutu insurgents in Congo-Zaire, it may be one of the more reasonable actions he took: e.g. the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) are forever misaligned by the Pentagon and its propaganda minions precisely because they fought against the illegal invasion of Rwanda by Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni. Meanwhile, it is Rwanda, Uganda and their foreign multinational corporate allies that are responsible for the preponderance of killing in Central Africa, not the FDLR.

According to Amnesty International, another selective human rights organ serving western interests, Gaddafi also reportedly armed Sudanese in Darfur — long before the current conflict began in 2003 — to fight against western backed interventions in Chad and Sudan.

Gaddafi reportedly owns land in Zimbabwe and may flee there or to other countries where repressive control is maintained in service to western interests.

Muammar Gaddafi is/was the most recent chairman of the African Union, another elite organization designed to serve western exploitation — or run by a cabal of thieves, at the very least, who all have the goods on each other, and so none will ever challenge the way things are — while the people, the masses of Africa, everywhere suffer.

The African Union (AU) signed on with Washington for the devastating neo-liberal trade and tariffs agreement known euphemistically as the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). The AU special report on genocide in Rwanda was a complete whitewash serving US/UK interests and protecting dictators Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni. The AU has also been slammed by African leaders for inaction and silence in various developments on the continent.

Former AU chairman have included some of Africa’s most criminal dictators, such as Dennis Sassou Nguesso, who has reigned with absolute military brutality in the Republic of Congo for some 20 years (with a gap from 1992-1997). Gabon’s present ruler Albert-Bernard Bongo is the son-in-law of Dennis Sassou-Nguesso, and both have been
sustained with millions of Elf petrol dollars (see, e.g., keith harmon snow: “The Crimes of Bongo“). Sassou-Nguesso’s elite Cobra militia were also trained by French advisers and, like Colonel Joseph Mobutu, Sassou-Nguesso relied on Israeli security and intelligence for protection.

The AU’s alliance with NATO began long ago, and it saw expanded joint military operations in Sudan, where the AU served as NATO’s “African face” for US/UK and Israeli military interventions in the war for Darfur. For example, forces fighting for the NATO interests, commanded and commandeered under an AU banner, came from Paul Kagame’s Rwanda Defense Forces (formerly called Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army) responsible for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Uganda, Rwanda, Congo-Zaire, and then Darfur. Rather than condemning western military expansion and different forms of AFRICOM or CIA-backed terrorism, for example, the AU backs the western war of annihilation in Somalia, involving Ugandan troops trained by US Special forces, and the Pentagon’s expansion in Ethiopia, and support for dictator Meles Zenawi there. Ethiopia is the site of an ongoing genocide against the Annuak, Omo and Orono people — and no one has reported the atrocities in the blood-drenched oil-rich Ogaden basin there. What say the AU?

In “AFRICA: Global NATO Seeks to Recruit 50 New Military Partners,” journalist Rick Rozoff reports: “A recent article in Kenya’s Africa Review cited
sources in the African Union (AU) disclosing that the 28-member North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO] is preparing to sign a military partnership treaty with the 53-nation AU.” Rozoff explains that this is a likely maneuver against the spread of Chinese interests in the continent.

According to Black Agenda Report editor Glen Ford, who also traveled to Tripoli in 2008, Gaddafi is on the outs: the man who ruled this not-so-little North African dictatorship is about finished. Whatever the truth about Muammar Gaddafi, at least one thing is certain: he was not the big bad bogeyman now under attack by the West.

SUDAN
(Darfur is the giant block 12 concession on the left side.)
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And Now, the Gaddafi Genocide

On February 22, 2011, the Libyan deputy ambassador to the United Nations called on Muammar Gaddafi to step down and face trial over “war crimes and genocide.”

The charge has now been widely repeated in other news venues. “European diplomats are meeting around the clock to minimise risks for their nationals after a speech by Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi yesterday (22 February) was interpreted as “code to start genocide.”

“Gaddafi’s Genocide!” declared one CNN news pundit. A Stop Gaddafi Genocide! page was created on Facebook.

Such claims made by Libyan ‘opposition’ and reported in the western press that Gaddafi is committing genocide or about to commence genocide against his own people represent the height of western arrogance and hypocrisy.

The disinformation frenzy and hysteria knows no bounds. A web site dedicated to English language reporting on human rights in Cuba had this headline: “Human Rights in Cuba: Is Casto Supporting Gaddafi’s Genocide?” “Are Cuban pilots flying Gaddafi’s military jets, which are being deployed to attack peaceful Libyan protesters?” the article begins. Interestingly, Fidel Castro was the first international leader to publicly assert that Washington was about to invade Libya: Castro was right.

At this very moment the wars being prosecuted by the USA and its allies, including Japan, Europe, Israel, South Africa, Canada and Australia, far dwarf the ‘atrocities’ committed in Libya. While we have no credible reporting about who is killing, who is opposition, how many dead, etc., out of Libya, we have credible report after credible report establishing that the US and its allies have perpetrated massacres, tortures, and other atrocities, including genocide, in the millions of people, in Congo-Zaire, Rwanda, Uganda, Afghanistan, Iraq and Sudan — for a short list.

The claim of genocide here, akin to the one-sided charges against former Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana, or against Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir, are one more clear example of the Politics of Genocide delineated in great detail by this writer and others. Reports in western media — provided, again, by the FNSL and other western intelligence, covert operations or psychological operations flak organizations — are filled with harsh language and characterizations not seen in reporting on or by western military campaigns. For example, in many western reports we can find, such as Gruesome Footage Proves Libya Using Heavy Arms makes claims that “newspapers obtained shocking footage of corpses with bodies blasted off and several torsos in Libyan hospitals.”

So there are several torsos. That is not quite genocide. Where are the images? If such images of death and destruction do appear it will be in sharp contrast to the complete whiteout on dead bodies in the Pentagon’s other theaters of war, in the eastern Congo-Zaire or Somalia, or in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, some videos purporting to be ‘violence in Libya’ have disappeared from the web.

Images of dead bodies can be produced and published but these are easily stripped of context. How do western audiences and propaganda consumers know that these are authentic and not recycled images of protests from Yemen or Bahrain dumped into the western press (with their willing acknowledgment) by Britain’s MI-6, as has been alleged? Al-Jezeera shows its true western colors by not reporting much of anything, and that certainly not critical of western manipulation or involvement.

Ugandan dictator Yoweri Museveni greets the entourage of foreign mercenaries Tony Buckinham and others as part of the Heritage Oil & Gas / Sandline International meetings to secure oil concessions in the bloody Semliki basin bordering eastern Congo-Zaire & northern Uganda: both sites of actual genocides.

We saw the tactic of collecting dead bodies and skeletons used in Rwanda by the Pentagon’s agents of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, and in Darfur and South Sudan, where journalist Nicholas Kristof produced some dead shriveled bodies from some desert somewhere and claimed these were from the New York Times‘ Secret Genocide Archives. The atrocities were committed, we are told, by President Omar al-Bashir and the government of Sudan.

However, there is never any mention of US military involvement, mercenaries (Pacific Architects and Engineers, Dyncorp, others) on the ground in Sudan. Dead men tell no tales, or dead women: these dead bodies are as likely dead from US or Israeli backed ‘rebels’ — the Justice and Equality Movement or Sudan Liberation Army backed by the US, NATO, Israel and our puppet dictator in Uganda.

The double-standards and outright lies can be seen quickly, if one knows there are deeper truths, by examining propaganda produced by the International Crisis Group, or such propaganda tracts as Smith College English teacher Eric Reeves’ “A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide” — where there is not one reference to Ugandan dictator Yoweri Museveni and his backing of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in South Sudan — a US military covert operation — and the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) in Darfur, in all of the 386 pages.

Western mercenaries that have been deeply involved, and remain so, in some of the world’s bloodiest conflicts, in coup d’etats, in massacres and other atrocities, include British mercenary Tony Buckingham — whose mercenary past is legendary — founder of Heritage Oil & Gas, a petroleum company linked by Buckingham to mercenary firms Branch Energy and Sandline International. Buckingham was also a partner in the infamous Executive Outcomes, with former British Special Air Services (SAS) soldier-of-misfortune Tim Spicer — the recipient of massive Pentagon contracts in Iraq. Heritage director General Sir Michael Wilkes retired from the British Army in 1995 and is a former Middle East adviser to the British government and a member of the Army Board. Wilkes commanded Britain’s SAS regiment and was director of Special Forces. Heritage Oil has exploited opportunities in Mali, Uganda, Republic of Congo, Oman and Iraq.

 

Heritage Oil & Gas map of operations in Iraq

Similarly, there was no public outcry about the use of mercenaries to shore up a dictator when Central African Republic dictator Ange Felix Patasse called in Libyan troops and commanders to protect his private diamond republic. When Ethiopian troops joined the Pentagon’s efforts to overthrow Col. Joseph Mobutu and reorganize capitalist interests in Congo-Zaire (1996) — no one said a word. What are UN troops from Pakistan, Guatemala, India or Bangledesh — paid to carry a gun and use it if necessary in support of protecting capitalist interests? Mercenaries.

If there are acts of genocide being committed in Libya, they are not being committed by Gaddafi or those fighting for Gaddafi. Reports are emerging that indicate that black Africans are being targeted by ANTI-government forces — these would be the western media’s precious ‘rebels’ — for their perceived support of Gaddafi. These include black Africans from Sudan, Chad, or Egypt, many of which are apparently laborers who have been working the service and lower menial jobs in Libya.

In short, almost everything in the western press on the crises in Libya is slanted by some faction, or interest, or it is tainted by western arrogance, or by anti-imperialist ideology (of ‘solidarity’), even in the case of what is perceived to be the ‘alternative’ media. There is very little accurate reporting of any kind (but some good work linked or cited herein).

Muammar Gaddafi has been a champion for people of color — providing funding, hope and solidarity where none existed, and this correspondent is aware that this correspondent’s writing herein is deficient in presenting all the positive aspects of his collaboration with people of color.

“The lies of the media cannot hide the fact that Gaddafi has supported the struggles of peoples for liberation in Nicaragua, Cuba, Angola, Mozambique, South Africa and many other countries, specifically concretely helping the people who fought for liberation,” writes Antonio Cesar Oliviera, in “Who Is Muammar Gaddafi?”

“In practice, Gaddafi has always been a benefactor of mankind, but for the mercenary [western] media, a benefactor is one who creates wars in search of profits for the arms industry or to dominate the world, as were the wars created by the U.S. in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, El Salvador, Nicaragua and many other countries.”

Gaddafi’s alliance with Islam and his support for truly revolutionary movements must be understood for what the capitalist system sees them as: slaps in the face of power and threats to that power. This is one of the biggest reasons that Gaddafi, throughout his tenure as leader of the Libyan Revolution, has been considered the devil incarnate by Washington and London etc.

This report [herein] is just another incomplete picture of an incomplete puzzle — but it seeks to penetrate through and expose the ongoing western media campaign for what it is: a psychological operation against the masses of earth’s people who have not and do not benefit from the nasty policies and actions implemented to serve a very small and elite group of people.

Muammar Gaddafi is not my enemy, and I am not his, and so my criticisms are reserved for those involved in the unjust and illegitimate invasions and wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Congo-Zaire, Somalia and now Libya. Gaddafi has opposed the unjust International Criminal Court, and so do I.

People wishing to support the legitimate grievances and actions for freedom and truth in Libya should challenge the western terrorist apparatus out of Washington, DC, Tel Aviv, Brussels, London and Toronto.

Prayers for the true innocent civilians in Libya, and across the region.

• keith harmon snow traveled to Tripoli, Libya in 2009 and stayed about 3 days while attending the “2009 International Conference of the Green Book Supporters” as a member of the US Delegation invited by former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia Mckinney (D-GA).
• Maps are from a petroleum industry map of all Africa produced in 1996: much has changed since then, only for the worse, in terms of oil and gas expansions.
• Photography Credits: keith harmon snow