“’This is something similar to what occurred in Gaza or worse, because neither observers nor journalists had access to the war zone,’ stated a UN source who asked for anonymity. The army acknowledges that 6,200 soldiers and 22,000 guerrillas died in the last three years of the longest civil war in Asia. The UN affirms that between 80,000 and 100,000 persons died in the conflict,” wrote Elisa Reche of Prensa Marea Socialista.

“During the war,” Reche continued, “the army had 200,000 troops. Now with peace, 100,000 are being incorporated… A strange peace it is that requires more troops than in actual combat.”

More troops are needed because systematic ethnic cleansing is now the order of the day for the Tamil people. Their Homeland will be obliterated by introducing more Sinhalese settlers. The same strategy, as John Pilger pointed out, that Israel uses against Palestinians.

This is what M.K. Bhadrakumar, an ambassador for India who served in Sri Lanka and other countries, wrote about the day after Sri Lanka declared victory.

See, they have already solved the Tamil problem in the eastern provinces… The Tamils are no more the majority community in these provinces. Similarly, from tomorrow, they will commence a concerted, steady colonization program of the Northern provinces where Prabhakaran reigned supreme for two decades. They will ensure incrementally that the northern regions no more remain as Tamil provinces… Give them a decade at the most. The Tamil problem will become a relic of the bloody history of the Indian sub-continent.

Ethnic cleansing goes hand-in-hand with the policy of imprisoning and mistreating hundreds of thousands of Tamils. For more than a year before its military victory, the Sri Lanka government enticed Tamils, wishing to flee the war zone, into so-called “welfare” centers or villages. Tens of thousands became “Internally Displaced Persons” (IDP), and are thus subject to United Nations regulations concerning decent living conditions, food and water, freedom of movement and the right to leave and rejoin families. All these rights and necessities have been denied them.

“Really if I starve the Tamils out, the Sinhala people will be happy,” President J.R. told the Daily Telegraph, (UK) on July 11, 1983.

A quarter-century later, the current president is striving to fulfill his predecessor’s genocidal intentions. Mahinda Rajapakse has claimed that no IDP is held against his/her will and all are treated well. However, the few United Nations visitors—there are no official investigators into abuses since the Human Rights Council majority blocked such a possibility—who come to observe have quite another picture.

When UN’s political chief, Lynn Pascoe, visited camps in September he said people were not free or well treated… “this kind of closed regime goes directly against the principles under which we work in assisting IDPs all around the world.”

Rajapakse told Pascoe another tale about “free movement”. He said that detention was necessary because the army was clearing the area for mines, and it was still looking for guerrillas hiding among civilians. However, as the UN resident coordinator reported, and Amnesty Internationalquoted: “Under international humanitarian law, captured combatants…may be held pending the cessation of hostilities. Once active hostilities have ceased, prisoners of war must be released ‘without delay.’”

At of July, there were 9,400 individuals with purported links to the LTTE held separately from the rest of the population. They have not been released nearly half-a-year after internment.

Amnesty International also reported that the camps are clearly militarized. The 19-member Presidential Task Force established in mid-May “to plan and coordinate resettlement, rehabilitation and development of the Northern Province” is headed Major General CA Chandrasiri, who was also appointed governor of the province. All inmates are enclosed by barbed-wire fences, guarded and brutalized by well-armed soldiers.

“Arrests have been reported from the camps and Sri Lankan human rights defenders have alleged that enforced disappearances have also occurred,” wrote Amnesty.

“Sri Lanka’s history of large-scale enforced disappearances dating back to the 1980s, and the lack of independent monitoring… raises grave concerns that enforced disappearances and other violations of human rights may be occurring… Previous research [shows] that [persons] suspected by the government of being members or supporters of LTTE are at grave risk of extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearance, and torture, cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.”

“Although the government calls these facilities ‘welfare villages,’ they are effectively detention camps…” Amnesty International also reported that not only are people not free to move as they wish, women and girls are raped by soldiers, and people live in sewage, disease-infested conditions, with little food and water and medical attention. They die in droves because of these imposed conditions.

Women and children are especially mistreated, which was the subject that James Elder, spokesperson for UNICEF, complained about to Sri Lankan authorities, who then expelled him from the country. Elder described the “unimaginable suffering” of children caught in the fighting, including babies he had seen with shrapnel wounds.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had refrained from criticizing Sri Lanka’s government, leveling his critique only at LTTE for carrying out atrocities. But when he briefly visited one camp less than a week after the end of the war, he said:

“I have traveled around the world and visited similar places, but this is by far the most appalling scenes I have seen…I sympathize fully with all of the displaced persons,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon told CNN after visiting Manik Farm, the most presentable of Sri Lanka’s squalid and dangerous internment camps for Tamils civilians. The UN Chief has also promised international action regarding the heavy shelling of civilian populations during the recent fighting.

Out of the 280,000 IDPs after the end of the war (there were nearly one-half million over a year’s period), only between 15,000 and 40,000 had been released by November 1. Half of them, perhaps, have been ransomed. The Sunday Times wrote about “human trafficking at the internment camps.” Relatives were made to pay camp authorities in order to secure their release.

Future

A week after the end of the war, the LTTE communicated that several of its leaders were killed, but the organization would continue struggling for an independent Tamil Eelam in peaceful ways. July 22, the LTTE announced that its chief of international relations, Selvarsa Pathmanathan—known as KP—was made the new leader, and that a new strategy for a “free Tamil Eelam” would occur. On August 8, England’s The Independent wrote that Pathmanathan was under arrest by Sri Lanka and held incommunicado.

For us solidarity activists, left-wing organizations, and governments considered to be progressive-socialist-communist-revolutionary, I believe that our task must be to press for the lives and rights of the Tamil people. Australia’s Democratic Socialist Perspective and Socialist Alliance said it well in its October 2009 international situation report:

Now the Tamil struggle has entered a new phase. The immediate campaign must focus on defence of basic human rights, release and resettlement of the Internally Displaced Persons currently held in SL government concentration camps, an end to murders, torture, rapes, and provision of basic housing, food and drinking water to the Tamil people under brutal occupation.

As a solidarity activist, who advocates the right to resist and the necessity to conduct armed struggle once peaceful means fail to induce oppressive and terrorist governments to engage in a process aimed at peace with justice, I condemn all perpetrators of terrorism and demand they change tactics to ones that are morally in accordance with our ideology for socialism, for justice with equality.

I find that most, if not all, armed movements commit acts of atrocities, even acts of terror in the long course of warfare. This has sometimes been the case with FARC and PFLP, for instance. But I support them in their righteous struggle. They are up against, as was the more brutal LTTE, much greater military and economic forces that practice state terror endemically. Remember the ANC in South Africa’s war for liberation. They committed much the same.

The main reason why I am on their side, why I have been a leftist solidarity activist and writer for nearly half-a-century is a matter of basic ethics. I define ethics in this way: Life shall not be abused or destroyed by our conscious hand—without being attacked, invaded, oppressed beyond bare. A moral person, organization, political party, government acts in daily life and in the struggle for justice with that ethic in mind. These are my thoughts on morality.

1. We act to so that no one person, race or ethnic group is either over or under another.
2. In combat against oppressors and invaders, we do not kill non-combatant civilians nor forcefully recruit them, or use them as hostages.
3. We struggle to create equality for all.
4. We abolish all profit-making based upon the exploitation of labor or the oppression of any person, group of people or class. Instead, we build an economy based upon principles of justice and equality, one in which no one goes hungry, sharing equitably our resources and production.
5. We struggle to create a political system based upon participation where all have a voice in decision-making of vital matters, in local, national and international policies.
6. We struggle to eliminate alienation in each of us.

After following liberated Cuba for half-a-century, having lived and worked there for eight years, I find that during its guerrilla struggle, which fortunately only lasted two years, it acted in a moral manner. Cuba’s revolutionary armed struggle was exceptional in this way. The Vietnamese struggle against the invaders of France and the USA was so conducted as well. There are a few other examples: the original Sandinistas is, perhaps, one.

I think that the key reason why so many millions of people the world love and respect Che Guevara is because of his moral stance, of his example as a just revolutionary leader. I conclude this all-too-long essay with these oft-quoted words from Che’s Socialism and Man.

At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love… Our vanguard revolutionaries must idealize this love of the people, the most sacred cause, and make it one and indivisible… one must have a great deal of humanity and a strong sense of justice and truth in order not to fall into extreme dogmatism and cold scholasticism, into an isolation from the masses. We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force.

Syed Hashmi’s trial will begin in New York City on December 1. The website freefahad explains that: “Syed Hashmi, known to his family and friends as Fahad, was born in Karachi, Pakistan in 1980, the second child of Syed Anwar Hashmi and Arifa Hashmi. Fahad immigrated with his family to America when he was three years old. His father said ‘We knew there would be many opportunities for us here in the United States. We came here to find the American dream.’ The large Hashmi family settled in Flushing, New York and soon developed deep roots throughout the tri-state area. Fahad graduated from Robert F. Wagner High School in 1998 and attended SUNY Stony Brook University. He transferred to Brooklyn College, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in political science in 2003. A devout Muslim, through the years Fahad established a reputation as an activist and advocate. In 2003, Fahad enrolled in London Metropolitan University in England to pursue a master’s degree in international relations, which he received in 2006. On June 6, 2006, Fahad was arrested in London Heathrow airport by British police based on an American indictment charging him with material support of Al Qaida. He was subsequently held in Belmarsh Prison, Britain’s most notorious jail.” For more information: the Hashmi case.

Angola 3 News: Can you please give us background on the arrest and prosecution of Syed Hashmi? For example, what are the charges against him? What is their evidence?

Jeanne Theoharis: In June 2006, Hashmi, who is a US citizen, was arrested by the British police at Heathrow Airport (he was about to travel to Pakistan, where he has family) on a warrant issued by the US government. In May 2007, he was extradited to the United States, the first US citizen to be extradited under terrorism laws passed after 9/11. Since then, he has since been held in solitary confinement at Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC).

The US government alleges that early in 2004, a man by the name of Junaid Babar, also a Pakistani-born US citizen, stayed with Hashmi at his London apartment for two weeks. According to the government, Babar stored luggage containing raincoats, ponchos, and waterproof socks in Hashmi’s apartment and then Babar delivered these materials to the third-ranking member of Al Qaida in South Waziristan, Pakistan. In addition, Hashmi allegedly allowed Babar to use his cell phone to call other conspirators in terrorist plots.

The government has claimed that Babar’s testimony is the “centerpiece” of its case. Babar, who has pleaded guilty to five counts of material support for Al Qaida, faces up to seventy years in prison. While awaiting sentence, he has agreed to serve as a government witness in terrorism trials in Britain and Canada as well as in Hashmi’s trial. Under a plea agreement reported in the media, Babar will receive a reduced sentence in return for his cooperation.

A3N: What can you tell us about Hashmi as a person, especially your personal experience of knowing him when he was a student of yours?

JH: Fahad was a student of mine at Brooklyn College in 2002. An outspoken Muslim student activist, Fahad wrote his senior seminar paper with me on the treatment of Muslim groups within the United States and the violations of civil rights and liberties that many groups were facing. Needless to say, this feels particularly chilling—and no longer academic—as we have now witnessed his own rights being violated.

A3N: Since his arrest, what have the conditions of his incarceration been?

JH: Under special administrative measures (SAMs) imposed in October 2007 by the former Attorney General, Hashmi must be held in solitary confinement and may not communicate with anyone inside the prison other than prison officials. Family visits are limited to one person every other week for one and a half hours and cannot involve physical contact. While his correspondence to members of Congress and other government officials is not restricted, he may write only one letter (of no more than three pieces of paper) per week to one family member. He may not communicate, either directly or through his attorneys, with the news media. He may read only designated portions of newspapers – and not until thirty days after their publication – and his access to other reading material is restricted. He may not listen to or watch news-oriented radio stations and television channels. He may not participate in group prayer. He is subject to 24-hour electronic monitoring inside and outside his cell – including when he showers or relieves himself – and 23-hour lockdown. He has no access to fresh air and must take his one hour of daily recreation – when it is given – inside a cage.

As the expert testimony supplied by Hashmi’s attorneys in a pre-trial motion of December 2008 attests, the conditions of Hashmi’s detention may have severe physical and mental consequences and impair his mental state and ability to testify on his own behalf.

While former Acting Attorney General Keisler claimed that these measures are necessary because “there is substantial risk that [Hashmi’s] communications or contacts with persons could result in death or serious bodily injury to persons,” Hashmi was held with other prisoners in a British jail for eleven months without incident. The SAMs were renewed by Attorney General Mukasey in November 2008 and upheld by Judge Loretta Preska in January 2009, citing Hashmi’s “proclivity for violence.” There has been no change to the SAMs under the Obama Administration. They were renewed again by Attorney General Holder in early November 2009. Yet, Hashmi is not being charged and has never been charged with committing an actual act of violence.

Currently, according to research by the New York Times in February 2009, there are six people in the United States being held on pre-trial terrorism SAMs; three (including Hashmi) are under the jurisdiction of the Southern District of New York, which has long served as a stepping stone to national political office.

A3N: Looking particularly at the harsh solitary confinement imposed on Hashmi, how is this officially justified? Do you think the stated reason is the actual motivation, or do you think there are other reasons for the solitary confinement and other harsh restrictions?

JH: My colleagues and I have begun to come to the conclusion that the use of prolonged solitary confinement is a tactic to ensure convictions. Such conditions weaken people mentally and the toll of sensory deprivation and isolation simultaneously makes people more eager to take a plea or not able to fully assist their counsel. Most experts agree it is torture (see Atul Gawande’s “Hellhole” in The New Yorker). While our public discussions have tended to see torture as a tactic to get information, in cases like Hashmi’s, torture is being used to help secure convictions.

A3N: How are the prion conditions for Hashmi in NYC different from those in Guantanamo?

JH: There are key similarities of prolonged isolation and sensory deprivation between Hashmi’s treatment at MCC in lower Manhattan and what we have heard of the conditions at Guantanamo. However, there has been much less attention to these inhumane conditions within the United States.

The focus on prisons like Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and Baghram stems, in part, from a larger post-civil rights paradigm that assumes the judicial process is now fair in the United States and relatively incorruptible and thus it was necessary to go outside of the US courts to do the extreme bad things.

Rather, what made Guantanamo possible stemmed from domestic legal practices, many already in place and many others expanded after 9/11, which have continued almost unabated under the Obama Administration.

A3N: With Hashmi’s trial beginning on December 1, what are activists currently doing to support him?

JH: Theaters Against War began holding weekly vigils in October to draw attention to the inhumane conditions of confinement and the due process violations Hashmi and others are facing within the federal courts. Artists and actors such as Wallace Shawn, Kathleen Chalfant, Bill Irwin, Jan Maxwell, Betty Shamieh, and Christine Moore have performed at the vigils.

A3N: Any closing thoughts?

JH: Three central Constitutional issues have become clear in the treatment of Hashmi and others within the federal system: the inhumane conditions of confinement, the abridgement of due process rights , and the lack of 1st Amendment protections.

If these are not addressed, then moving the Guantanamo detainees into the federal system does little to return America to the rule of law, of which we are rightfully proud. I am reminded of that quote by former Chief Justice Earl Warren in 1967, “It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of… those liberties… which [make] the defense of the nation worthwhile.”

A move to stage the commemoration in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, is being led by Michael Ben-Ari, who was elected this year and is the first self-declared former member of Kahane’s party, Kach, to become a legislator since the movement was banned 15 years ago.

The US Embassy, in Tel Aviv, has sent a series of e-mails to Reuven Rivlin, the parliamentary speaker, asking that he intervene to block the event.

According to US officials, pressure is being exerted on behalf of George Mitchell, the US president Barack Obama’s envoy to the region, who is concerned that it will add to his troubles as Israeli and Palestinian leaders clash over a possible move by the Palestinians to issue a unilateral declaration of statehood.

Some Israeli legislators have warned that Mr Ben-Ari and his supporters are gaining a stronger foothold in parliament, in an indication of the country’s increasing lurch rightwards.

“Ben-Ari and the advisers he has brought with him are unabashed representatives for Kach and Kahane’s ideas,” said Ahmed Tibi, an Arab legislator and the deputy speaker. “What we have is in effect a terrorist cell in the parliament.”

Kahane, a US rabbi who emigrated to Israel in the early 1970s, advocated the expulsion of all Arabs from “Greater Israel”, an area that the far right believes encompasses not only Israel but also the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and parts of neighbouring Arab states.

Kahane was elected to parliament in 1984 but was barred from standing again four years later. He was assassinated by an Egyptian-American in New York in November 1990.

In 1994 Kach was declared a terrorist organisation by Israel and the United States after Baruch Goldstein, a supporter, went on an armed rampage through the Ibrahimi mosque in the Palestinian city of Hebron, killing 29 worshippers and injuring 150.

Despite the ban, Kach is still active in many West Bank settlements, especially in and around Hebron, where shrines to Kahane and Goldstein regularly attract large numbers of devotees.

Mr Ben-Ari, one of four members of the National Union elected to the 120-seat parliament, has included as his parliamentary advisers two former Kach activists, Baruch Marzel and Itimar Ben Gvir, who are leaders of the far-right Jewish National Front. Mr Ben-Ari has never disavowed his support for Kahane, telling the Jerusalem Post newspaper this month that Kahane “dedicated his whole life to Israel … He was a great man and a great leader.”

This month Mr Ben-Ari was the voice on an advertisement on the Israeli radio station Reshet Bet to promote a public memorial service for Kahane held by his family. It was also reported that for the first time posters had been placed in many central areas of Jerusalem publicising the event and declaring “We all know now – Meir Kahane was right”.

The United States has expressed more concern, however, at a commemoration being planned in parliament.

Michael Perlstein, the second secretary at the US Embassy, is reported to have e-mailed Mr Rivlin several times, asking whether the commemoration was likely to be approved. According to e-mails leaked to the Israeli media, he added: “This is something Senator Mitchell and his team are following with some concern.”

An embassy spokesman reiterated those concerns last week: “To stir up controversy at the same time that we are trying to get people back to the [negotiating] table, is not productive of that effort. It is only natural that Senator Mitchell would be paying attention to that – and the US government as well.”

Mr Rivlin has reassured the United States that he has refused Mr Ben-Ari permission to stage a commemoration but has also admitted that it would be difficult for him to stop a “stunt” by Kahane supporters in the chamber.

“We are talking about a provocation,” Mr Rivlin told the Haaretz newspaper. “The man [Kahane] and his outlawed movement cannot be separated. This is an attempt to bring the Kach movement into the Knesset through the back door.”

Last week, Mr Ben-Ari appealed against the speaker’s decision to the House Committee, which rules on issues of parliamentary procedure. Mr Rivlin has said he will abide by the committee’s decision.

Its chairman, Yariv Levine of the ruling Likud Party, said he was not happy with Mr Rivlin’s refusal and is reported to be working with the speaker and Mr Ben-Ari to find a solution.

Mr Ben-Ari responded angrily to the US concern: “I was elected to the Knesset by citizens of the independent state of Israel. The flagrant involvement of Mitchell has crossed a red line and it testifies to the bowed head of the Knesset speaker that is turning the Knesset into a dish rag.”

Mr Ben-Ari is probably not the only former member of Kach in parliament. Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister and leader of the far-right Yisrael Beitenu party, the third largest in parliament, is believed to have joined Kach when he first arrived in Israel in the 1970s. His membership was revealed in February by Yossi Dayan, the movement’s former secretary general.

Last week Mr Ben-Ari had to cancel a trip to the United States, his first overseas visit, after he was refused a US visa. He had intended to speak to American Jewish groups to encourage emigration to Israel.

To date, the only authorised parliamentary commemorations are for Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister assassinated by a right-wing Jew in 1995, and for Rehavam Zeevi, a former general and leader of a far-right anti-Arab party, who was assassinated by Palestinian gunmen in 2001.

Sri Lanka’s first aborigines with continuous lineage are the Tamil people. It is not precisely known when they came to the island, but perhaps as many as 5000 years ago. Archaeologists date the first humans in Sri Lanka to some 34,000 years. Scientists call them Balangoda people, the name of the location where artifacts were found. These hunting-gathering cave dwellers have no current lineage.

Tamils were also known as proto-Elamites or Ela. These people in Sri Lanka call themselves Eelam Tamils, meaning “earthly people”. Tamils speak a Dravidian language, which has no ties to other language families. It was, perhaps, associated with Scythians and Urals. The Dravidian language and Tamils originated, perhaps, from Sumer and Ur: the “cradle of the first civilization”, now Iran. The Sumer and Tamils formed the first language of proto-grams on clay tablets. Tamil inscriptions and literature are at least 2500 years old. Today, 100 to 200 million people speak Tamil.¹

The Christian Bible refers to Elam as “maritime nations in various lands, each with a separate language”. (Genesis 10) In the myth of Noah’s Ark, Elam was thought to be a descendant of one of Noah’s three sons on the ark. (Genesis 5-9) Tamils were the first to use the wheel for transportation. They traveled to India and the island Sri Lanka, which had been connected to India. The first known manuscripts in India were written in Tamil. Other Tamil inscriptions have been found in Egypt and Thailand.

About 2500 years ago, the first Sinhalese came to Sri Lanka from India. This was hundreds of years after Tamils were settled in the kingdom in the north at Jaffna (Yazhpanam). Sinhalese is, perhaps, a term originating from King Vijayan, who was expelled from the kingdom of Sinhapura in India and arrived in Sri Lanka 543 BC. He and his people engaged in combat with the Tamil aborigines. They established the Kandi and Kottai kingdoms in the central and southern areas.

The Sinhalese are among many ethnic groups who speak an Indo-Aryan language, Pali, believed to have developed in Sindh, Gujarat and Bengal areas about 3000 years ago. They early became practitioners of Buddhism, an off-shot of Hinduism, which is the religion that most Tamils adopted. Buddhism was created by the prince, Siddhartha Gautama, in the 6th century BC. Most Sinhalese adopted Buddhism but some were converted to Christianity, which was first introduced by traders from Syria, in the 1st or 2nd century after Christ.

The Sinhalese and Tamils have distinct ethnic backgrounds, languages and religions. The vast majority of both peoples has always lived in separate regions of Sri Lanka and they have often been at war. The Sinhalese adopted the chauvinistic attitude that their language and religion were the only true ones and they must reign throughout Sri Lanka. All other religions were alien. This notion seems to have originated, or been fortified, by the historical poem Mahavamsa (“Great Chronicle”) written in Pali by the Buddhist monk Mahatera Mahanama. It covers nearly one thousand years of Sinhalese kingdom history in Sri Lanka.

Sinhalese maintain that Sri Lanka must be a Buddhist nation because, they claim, it has been so throughout history—although they count the beginning of national history with Mahanama’s account of the first Sinhalese kingdom of Vijaya, in 543 BC. The fact that Tamil Eelams had kingdoms in Sri Lanka for many hundreds of years is ignored.

When the first Europeans, Portuguese traders, landed in Sri Lanka, in 1505, they encountered three native kingdoms: two Sinhalese kingdoms at Kottai and Kandi, and the Tamils in Jaffna peninsula. Although the Portuguese were traders, they brought fire power and eventually seized power militarily from the Kottai kingdom. Despite their superior weaponry, it took them decades to defeat the kingdoms at Jaffna and Kandi, yet resistance remained throughout Portuguese occupation. The Portuguese named the island Ceilão, which the English later transliterated as Ceylon.

In 1658, Dutch invaders arrived. The Dutch United East India Company sided with the Kandi resistance to defeat the Portuguese. But when the natives realized the Dutch sought total control, the Kandians organized guerilla warfare. In 1766, the Dutch took sovereignty over the entire coastline but not the entire island where some Tamils and Sinhalese remained independent.

In 1795, the British landed and kicked out the Dutch within a year. They realized there were two separate nations of natives. In June 1796, the British Colonial Secretary, Sir Hugh Cleghorn wrote to his government:

“Two different nations, from a very ancient period, have divided between them the possession of the Island: the Sinhalese inhabiting the interior in its southern and western parts from the river Wallouwe to Chilaw, and the Malabars (Tamils) who possess the northern and eastern districts. These two nations differ entirely in their religion, language and manners.”

It took the Brits a generation to defeat resisting natives. In 1811, they defeated Bandara Vanniyan and his guerrilla resisters in the Tamil Vanni territory. In 1815, the British finally captured the last of the Kandyan kingdom.

The European invaders were only interested in the riches they could steal. They converted the peasant based agricultural economy into an export one. The island was rich in cinnamon and other spices, coconuts and graphite. English colonialists converted much of the land into tea, coffee and rubber plantations.

Religion was used by the colonialists to dominate and pacify the natives. The Portuguese spread Catholicism in an organized manner. Some Tamils and some Sinhalese converted or were forced to convert. Both the Dutch and English continued the process with their Protestant missionaries, yet most natives held onto their beliefs in either Buddhism or Hinduism. Islamism was also introduced by Arab traders.

“Sri Lanka as British-ruled Ceylon was subjected to a classic divide-and-rule,” wrote John Pilger.

The English had to have their tea so they created tea plantations in the mountainous regions, especially in the center of the country where Sinhalese lived. But Sinhalese would not work them so the Brits “brought Tamils from India as virtual slave labor while building an educated Tamil middle-class to run the colony,” continued Pilger.² Only a few indigenous Tamils, however, ran anything, but some educated ones took the opportunity to sit on top of the bottom castes.

A hierarchy of “races”, classes and castes was perpetrated among native ethnic groups and new arrivals. In the mid-1800s, English and German scholars adopted an ideology of superiority first based on language and then on race. The English viewed Sinhalese as cousins in the large Aryan family. Brits (and Germans) were the “superior” white Aryans; the Sinhalese lesser Indo-Aryans, and Tamils were the colonized proletariat, the “black inferior race.” This fit in nicely with the Sinhalese elite notion of superiority, based on their precious book of mythology, Mahavamsa. In the 1870s, a German scholar, Max Muller, writing about language origins, especially Indo-Aryan, first coined the term “Aryan race”—something he later regretted.³

Europeans took it for granted that Greek and Latin were superior languages, and they saw affinities with Sanskrit, from which Sinhalese is derived. Given this identity, it was easier for the colonialists to drive a wedge deeper between the indigenous peoples, and all the more so by allowing Sinhalese to own land without having to work the British tea and rubber plantations in the center of the country. The Brits left the aboriginal Tamils stay in their homeland in the north and east, but brought between 800,000 and 1.5 million Tamils from India to work the fields; nearly one-fourth died in route. It is estimated that 70,000 Tamil Nadu died on route in the 1840s. Their story parallels that of Africans forced into slavery and brought to the Americas.

Ironically, it was protestant missionaries who contributed greatly to the development of political awareness among Tamils in the north and east, and led to a revival of the Hindu faith as a reaction against Christian domination. We find many examples of this in modern history, such as the increasing interest among Arabs in practicing strict Islamic customs, including separate gender rules, as a reaction to the invasions and occupations of Western imperialism in the Middle-East. Something similar is occurring in Palestine in response to the apartheid enforced by Zionist Jews.

Led by revivalist Arumuga Navalar in the mid-1800s, Tamils in the north and east built their own schools, temples, associations and presses. Literacy was used to spread Hinduism and its principles. Tamils published their own literature and newspapers to counter the ideology-religion of the missionaries. Tamils thought confidently of themselves as a community, thus lending to the legitimacy of their later assertion of the necessity to be treated equally with the Sinhalese or be granted—or take—their own autonomy as Eelam Tamils.

For some of the time that Britain ruled the island different colonial governors recognized equality of the native peoples, yet played one against the other. In 1833, the British mandated the administrative unification of the country while incorporating the different native administrative structures that existed earlier. The new legislative council was composed of three Europeans and one representative from the Sinhalese, the Ceylon Tamils and the Burghers—a Euro-Asian minority, Creole descendants of European colonialists who spoke a mixture of Indo-Portuguese. They had been converted to Protestantism.

Tamil laborers brought from India had no say nor did the few Arab Muslims. Racist Sinhalese massacred many in 1915. In 1930, another hard-working minority, Malayali plantation workers, were attacked by Sinhalese and most fled back to Kerala.

In 1921, the colonialists altered the legislative council so that Sinhalese acquired 13 seats to three for the Tamils. From here on out, Tamils developed a communal consciousness as a minority. In 1931, the Brits changed the rules again by incorporating the notion of universal franchise—one man one vote including for castes. Most Sinhalese opposed this progressive measure, seeking to maintain classes and castes while agreeing to part of the rule allowing them, as the majority, to have a decisive say over the minority Tamils. The issue of representative power-sharing, and not the structure of government, was used by nationalists of both communities to create an escalating inter-ethnic rivalry, which has been the dominant trend since.

Britain’s vacillating ruling strategy throughout their 150 year domination led to sporadic episodes of violence between Sinhalese and Tamils, often expressed as religious conflicts between Buddhists, Hindus, Christians and Muslims. More often than not, it was Buddhists who first attacked other ethnic peoples who held other faiths. The Brits often held police on the sidelines.

In the 1930s, and especially during World War II, Sinhalese and Tamils spoke out for independence. Various left-wing parties and coalitions arose, and some conservative groupings as well. Many natives hoped for a German victory over the hated English colonialists.

Tamils struggled to have their language placed on equal terms with Sinhalese, and replace English as the official language. Some Sinhalese leaders agreed but many did not. In 1939, a Tamil leader, G.G. Ponnambalam, spoke against the common Sinhalese notion, taken from the Mahavamsa, that their language should be the only official language and Buddhism the only official religion. Angry at the speech, Sinhalese mobs bashed and killed many Tamils. This time the British stopped the riots, but the roots to the upcoming 26-year long civil war had been laid.

Once WW II ended, the British Empire realized it had to give in to so many native peoples struggling for sovereignty. India won dominion status in 1947, a slight reform until full independence in 1950. The civil disobedience movement led by Mahatma Gandhi had succeeded yet he was assassinated by a Hindu nationalist on January 30, 1948. Gandhi sought unity among all Indians, but most Muslims wanted their own State after colonialism. Many Muslims were killed in riots; many lost their homes. Gandhi believed it morally correct for India to compensate them with finances. Many Hindu nationalists opposed this, and it led to his murder.

Great numbers of Hindus in India discriminated against non-Hindus just as Buddhist Sinhalese discriminate against Hindus and Muslims. The percentage of Tamils in Sri Lanka has been reduced from 30% to 12.6%. Tens of thousands have been murdered before and during the recent war, and as many as one million have fled the country, part of a massive Diaspora, like the Jews.⁴

1. This condensed history is gleaned from many sources: author Maravanpulavu K. Sachithananthan; Latin American Friendship Association, Tamilnadu, India; Wikipedia: many articles about Tamil Eelam, Sri Lanka and their histories, religions and languages; Tamilnation.org and many other sections in this comprehensive Tamil self-determination website. I am uncertain about the exactitude of origins, who came first, specific dates, or how to determine linguistic lineages. The record is unclear. But what is clear is that Sinhalese have judged and treated Tamils as inferior beings.
2. John Pilger, “Distant Voices, Desperate Lives,” New Statesman, May 13, 2009.
3. See chapter 13. “Understanding the Aryan Theory,” by Marisa Angell, a Usamerican Jew. The chapter is part of Culture and Politics of Identity in Sri Lanka, edited by Mithran Tiruchelvam and Dattathreya C.S., published by International Center for Ethnic Studies, Colombo, Sri Lanka, 1998.
4. Current population statistics of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka—so named since 1978—show a population of 21 million people. 74% (15 million) Sinhalese; 12.6% (2.5 million) Tamil; 7.4% (1.5 million) Moors; 5.2% (1 million) Indian Tamil. 93% of Sinhalese are Buddhists, and the remainder Christian. 60% Tamils are Hindus, 28% are Muslim and 12% Christian.

This means that no war has broken out, no suicide bomb has exploded, no Qassam rocket has been launched at Sderot. Ahmadinejad has not test-fired a new missile that can reach Tel Aviv. Just another murder.

Not that Israel is the world’s murder capital. We shall have to work much harder to reach the heights of New York or Moscow, not to mention Johannesburg. Statistics even show our murder rate is declining.

But lately Israel has been shocked by a series of exceptionally brutal murders. A husband took revenge on his wife by killing his little daughter and burying her in a forest. A man who lived with the wife of his son killed her daughter, his own granddaughter, put her little body in a suitcase and threw it into Tel Aviv’s Yarkon river. A son who quarreled with his wife killed her and her mother, cut up both bodies and dispersed the parts in garbage bins. A young man who had a quarrel with his mother killed her, and then went off to kill his brother, too. A man in his 70s killed his wife in her sleep with a hammer.

In recent weeks, there were two cases that trumped even these atrocities.

Damian Karlik, an immigrant from Russia who worked as head waiter in a Russian restaurant, was dismissed for theft and decided to take revenge on the owners, Russian immigrants like him. He went to their apartment and stabbed to death six people, one after another – the owner and his wife, their son and his wife and their two small grandchildren.

An immigrant from the US called Jack Teitel, an inhabitant of one of the most extreme West Bank settlements, has now confessed to the killing some years ago of two random Palestinians. He returned briefly to America, and, after coming back, put bombs into police cars. Why? Because the police were protecting gays and lesbians. He is also suspected of killing two traffic policemen for the same reason. He also claimed responsibility for the mass killing of gays in a Tel Aviv club (though that may be empty bragging). He planted a bomb in the home of some Messianic Jews (Jews who regard Jesus as the Messiah) and grievously injured a 15-year-old. He tried to kill the leftist professor Ze’ev Sternhell with another bomb which wounded him.

What is so special about these two cases is that they involved new immigrants who were allowed into Israel in spite of already being under investigation for crimes in their homelands.

The Law of Return accords every Jew the right to immigrate (“make Aliyah”) to Israel, where he or she automatically receives Israeli citizenship on arrival. But even according to this law, the Minister of the Interior can reject people suspected of serious crimes.

This makes the case of Karlik especially interesting. He was suspected in Russia of armed robbery, but the organization in charge of issuing Israeli immigration permits in Russia asserts that they did not know about it.

This organization, Nativ (“path”), was active in the Soviet Union as one of the Israeli secret services, like the Mossad and Shin Bet. Its particular job was to infiltrate Jewish communities and induce Jews to come to Israel.

Apart from this, Nativ was also engaged, of course, in espionage. It is no secret that for decades immigrants arriving from the Soviet Union were interrogated exhaustively by the Shin Bet about military, economic and other installations in their former homeland. The precious information thus gathered ensured Israel a high standing in the Western intelligence community.

After the collapse of the Communist regime, Nativ was to be disbanded, but like every threatened organization it fought for its life. It was decided to leave it intact and put it in charge of immigration to Israel from all the former Soviet republics. They now have to make sure that immigrants are kosher Jews according to religious law.

The religious credentials of the immigrants interest Nativ much more than any criminal record they may have. It seems Nativ has no contacts with the Russian police, who probably suspect it of other activities.

Thus it happens that a person like Karlik, a man under investigation for robbery with violence, was found suitable for immigration. His ethnic pedigree was impeccable. After his arrival in Israel, the Russian authorities officially applied for his extradition for robbery, but the request was denied. The escaped robber was issued a license for a gun and allowed to work as a guard.

Teitel’s case is similar. True, in the US there is no Nativ, but the logic of those in charge of emigration to Israel is the same: to bring immigrants without asking unnecessary questions. According to religious law, a Jew remains a Jew even if he sins.

These affairs shine a spotlight on one of the guiding principles of the Zionist establishment: to bring Jews to Israel, whatever the price. Statistics must show that this year – or any other year – a record number of Jews have “made Aliyah”. In many communities, the bottom of the barrel is scraped in order to bring more Jews. Emissaries find “lost tribes” of Jews in Peru and Ethiopia, India and China.

In this situation, there is an understandable temptation to overlook the criminal past of would-be immigrants. So what if somebody, a kosher Jew, has robbed a bank or mistreated children? In Israel he will perhaps mend his ways. Or if somebody was put on trial abroad for illegal arms deals, money laundering and/or selling blood-stained diamonds – he is welcome, and if he brings his millions with him, the leaders of the state will be happy to be photographed in his company.

That is true, of course, only for an immigrant who is a Jew according to the Halakha (religious law). If he is a Goy, the story is quite different. That is the province of the leader of the Shas party, Eli Yishai.

In the present Israeli government there are several candidates for the title of Racist in Chief. An objective jury would be hard put to choose between them.

The favorite is the Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, a certified racist whose entire career in Israel is built on hatred towards Arabs and foreigners. It was he who appointed as Minister of Justice the kippa-wearing lawyer Ya’akov Ne’eman, who is now busily engaged in securing the all-important position of Legal Advisor to the Government (practically the Attorney General) for a judge educated in a Yeshiva (Orthodox school), who lives in one of the more extreme settlements and who has become notorious for several rightist judgments. Binyamin Netanyahu himself, of course, is also an excellent candidate.

But the King of Racists is the Minister of the Interior. He is more dangerous than his colleagues because he has absolute power over the civil status of every person in Israel, immigration and emigration, the Register of Residents and the expulsion of foreigners. In this position he is now doing to foreigners what others have done to Jews in many countries. He is untiring in his efforts to guard the real Israel – not the “Jewish and democratic state” as it is officially defined, but rather the “Jewish and demographic state”. For this purpose he has recently created a special para-police force for the detection and deportation of illegal foreigners.

It is difficult to decide whether Yishai is an extreme fanatic or a complete cynic, or some strange combination. As matter of fact, when Shas was still a moderate party, in those distant days when its guru, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, ruled that it is permissible to give back the occupied territories, and its former leader, Aryeh Deri, was the darling of the left, Yishai, too, declared, “Yes to Oslo, Yes to the evacuation of Jews from Hebron, Yes to Arafat!” But since then much dirty water has flowed down our polluted rivers, Shas has turned into a radical right-wing party and Yishai is now the most extreme rightist in the government.

His unshakable devotion to the purity of the race arouses admiration. Hardly a day passes without some shocking news about his activities. He fights like a tiger for the expulsion of 1500 children of foreign workers who were born in Israel, who speak Hebrew and attend Israeli schools, who have no other homeland. Yishai is ready to lay down his life for their deportation.

The Interior Ministry prevents the entry of American and European citizens who bear Arab names. Officials of the UN and the EU in charge of projects for the Palestinians are normally unable to enter from Jordan (or anywhere else outside Israel), and if they somehow do obtain permission – they are then forbidden to cross the Green Line into Israel. Foreign women married to Israelis are expelled without mercy. There is no end to the examples.

In the eyes of Yishai, every son of a Thai is an enemy of the Jewish state, every daughter of a Colombian worker is a threat to the purity of the Jewish people. He has declared that the foreign workers are an “infection”, and warned that Tel Aviv is “becoming Africa”. He has disclosed that the foreigners carry frightening diseases, such as AIDS, tuberculosis and such. (And in this respect they resemble gays and lesbians, who, according to Yishai, are “sick people”.

Such a person would not remain a minister in the cabinet of the US or most European countries. In the homeland of the Nuremberg laws he would not even come close to a government position.

Recently, during the operation “Cast Lead”, Yishai demanded that we “bomb thousands of houses, to destroy Gaza” – which does not hinder him from denouncing Judge Richard Goldstone as an abominable anti-Semite. He himself, by the way, never risked his skin as a combat soldier – this national hero served as an NCO for religious services in a transport unit.

800 years ago, Rabbi Moshe Ben-Nahman, called Nahmanides, coined the phrase “Scoundrel with the permission of the Torah” – meaning a person who does despicable things which are not expressly forbidden in the Bible. I am not sure if even this appellation would fit Yishai, since the Bible forbids more than once the mistreatment of strangers – “Ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless and the widow” (Jer. 7:6), “He… loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment” (Deut. 10:18) and many other commandments to this effect.

But more important than Yishai himself is the phenomenon that he represents: the invocation of the demographic demon, which terrifies the country.

62 years after its foundation, the State of Israel is still living in fear of the “demographic danger”. It is afraid of its Arab citizens, and therefore discriminates against them in every sphere. It is afraid of the 400 thousand Russians who have come to this country with their Jewish relatives in accordance with the Law of Return, but whose mothers were not Jewish. Here is a built-in contradiction: while the Nativ operators are interested in maximizing the number of immigrants, Yishai and his people deny these very same immigrants the right to marry Jews or to be buried in Jewish graveyards. They serve in the army, but if they fall in action they cannot be buried next to their comrades.

Practically all Hebrew Israelis want a state with a Hebrew majority, where the Hebrew language, culture and tradition are cultivated. But many of us do not want a man-hunting, woman-hunting and child-hunting state, closed to asylum-seekers, where foreign workers who outstay their welcome must live in permanent fear, like our ancestors in the ghettoes.

In order to exorcise the demographic demon, my friends and I have applied to the courts and requested that the registration “Nation: Jewish” in the Ministry’s Register of Residents be replaced with “Nation: Israeli”. Our application was rejected by Judge Noam Solberg – the very same person the Minister of Justice is moving mountains to get appointed as Attorney General.

A South African woman who said Botswana’s president ‘looks like a Bushman’ was arrested, detained for two days and fined for ‘insulting Botswana’.

Dorsey Dube was arrested after commenting on a portrait of President Khama at a control post on the Botswana-South Africa border. She said the President looked like her friend’s father, who has Bushman features.

The deeply-entrenched racist attitudes of many people in authority in Botswana towards the Bushmen were starkly revealed, however, when the authorities assumed it was meant as an insult. Survival International is sending a report on the incident to the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Ms Dube says she was held at the police station and not allowed to call anyone in South Africa for assistance, though her friends did eventually reach help. She was released after spending a night in a prison cell and a further full day in custody.

President Khama (who is himself half-British) has referred to the Bushmen’s way of life as an ‘archaic fantasy’. The government has banned them from hunting for food or accessing water on their land, in a bid to force the Bushmen to abandon their land and lifestyle.

A tourist lodge built on the Bushmen’s land is allowed to use all the water it needs, on condition that it does not provide the Bushmen with any.

President Ian Khama, who was returned to office after elections in October, is a board member of Conservation International.

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said today, ‘You couldn’t have clearer evidence of the racism towards Bushmen in Botswana than this incident. A South African person thought resembling a Bushman was complimentary, but Botswana officials took it as an insult. It’s doubly tragic when you consider that President Khama’s father, the country’s first President, himself endured a great deal of racist abuse from the colonial authorities for marrying a British woman, and that he promised the country’s Bushmen that their rights would always be protected.’

As a result, major media sources produce a daily propaganda diet and what Project Censored calls “junk food news,” and get most people to believe it. In their landmark book, Manufacturing Consent, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky explained the “propaganda model” that controls the public message by “filter(ing)” disturbing truths, “leaving (behind) only the cleansed residue fit to print” or air.

Today the media is in crisis and a free and open society at risk at a time fiction substitutes for fact, news is carefully controlled, dissent marginalized, and on-air and print journalists support powerful interests as paid liars, or what famed journalist George Seldes (1890-1995) called “prostitutes of the press.”

As a result, imperial wars are called liberating ones. Civil liberties are suppressed for our own good. Major topics go unaddressed or are misrepresented. Government and business interests are endorsed wholeheartedly. America is always called “beautiful.” Beneficial social change is considered heresy. The market works best, we’re told, so let it, and patriotism means supporting lawlessness and corporate outlaws by shopping till we drop.

The New York Times: Its Lead Role in Distorting and Suppressing Truth

For many decades, the Times has been the closest thing in America to an official ministry of information and propaganda masquerading as real news, commentary and analysis.

Its unmatched clout once got media critic Norman Solomon to call its front page “the most valuable square inches of media real estate in the USA;” most everywhere, in fact, because its reports are widely circulated and followed globally.

The Paper of Record has a long history of:

• supporting the powerful;
• backing corporate interests;
• endorsing imperial wars;
• supporting CIA efforts to topple elected governments, assassinate independent leaders, prop up friendly dictators, secretly fund and train paramilitary death squads, practice sophisticated forms of torture, and menace democratic freedoms at home and abroad. For decades, in fact, some Times‘ foreign correspondents were covert Agency assets. Others today likely are as well as other prominent fourth estate members.

The Times management is also comfortable with:

• Washington and corporate lawlessness;
• an unprecedented and growing wealth gap;
• Wall Street banksters looting the federal treasury;
• a private banking cartel controlling the nation’s money;
• unmet human needs and increasing poverty, hunger, homelessness, and despair for growing millions in a nation run by rogue politicians who don’t give a damn as long as they’re re-elected;
• a de facto one-party state;
• deep corruption at the highest government and corporate levels;
• democracy for the select few alone;
• sham elections; and
• a deepening social decay symptomatic of a declining state, yet The Times management won’t use its clout to expose and help reverse it.

Of course, the same applies throughout the corporate media, the only variance being audience size, the ability to influence it, and the special impact of TV news and talk radio to arouse their faithful. Plus their power of round-the-clock persuasive repetition.

Examples of Journalism, New York Times Style

After a Washington staged February 29, 2004 middle-of-the-night coup ousted democratically elected Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the Times March 1 editorial lied by:

• stating he resigned;
• saying sending in Marines to abduct him “was the right thing to do;”
• claiming they only came after “Mr. Aristide yielded power;”
• blaming him for “contribut(ing) significantly to his own downfall (because of his) increasingly autocratic and lawless rule….;” and
• accusing him of manipulating the 2000 legislative elections and not “deliver(ing) the democracy he promised.”

In fact, he’s a beloved democrat first elected in 1990 with 67% of the vote, ousted by a US-supported coup months later, returned to Haiti in 1994, then, because he couldn’t succeed himself in 1996, ran in 2000 and was overwhelmingly re-elected with 92% of the vote. Today in exile, the great majority of Haitians want him back but paramilitary occupiers, under orders from Washington, won’t let him.

Following Hugo Chavez’s December 1998 election, the Times‘ Latin American reporter, Larry Roher, wrote:

Regional “presidents and party leaders are looking over their shoulders (concerned about the) specter (they) thought they had safely interred: that of the populist demagogue, the authoritarian man on horseback known as the caudillo (strongman)” taking power.

Ever since, Times writers consistently:

• turned a blind eye to Venezuelan democracy;
• bashed Chavez as “divisive, a ruinous demagogue, provocative (and) the next Fidel Castro;”
• said he “militarized the government, emasculated the country’s courts, intimidated the media, eroded confidence in the economy, and hollowed out Venezuela’s once-democratic institutions:” common conditions during decades of pre-Chavez rule that columnist Roger Lowenstein falsely said exist now in:
• calling him anti-capitalist for sharing his nation’s oil wealth with the people by providing essential social services, and for lifting the most needy out of poverty; and
• denouncing his making foreign investors pay their fair share.

Lowenstein backed the aborted April 2002 coup by calling Chavez’s ouster a “resignation,” then saying Venezuela “no longer (would be) threatened by a would-be dictator.”

Post-/911, the Times played the lead role in taking the nation to war by highlighting the “day of terror” and saying the “President Vows to Exact Punishment for ‘Evil.’ ”

In the run-up to the Iraq war, Judith Miller was a weapon of mass deception with her daily front page Pentagon press release columns masquerading as real news, later exposed as manipulative lies, but they worked.

Following the September 15, 2009 Goldstone Commission report, a same day Neil MacFarquhar column suggested that Israel’s “disproportionate attack” followed Hamas provocations, so perhaps it was justified. While the Times gave Judge Goldstone op-ed space, it:

– published scathing letters denouncing his “one-sidedness” and a September 18 piece saying “the Obama administration said (today) that a United Nations report accusing Israel of war crimes in Gaza was unfair to Israel and did not take adequate account of ‘deplorable’ actions by the militant group Hamas in the conflict last winter.”

The paper then imposed a near-blackout on its news and editorial pages to bury the story and kill it through silence – never mind its importance in documenting clear evidence of Israeli war crimes against a civilian population.

National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcasting (PBS)

Founded in 1970 as an independent, private, non-profit member organization of US public radio stations, NPR promised to be an alternative to commercial broadcasters by “promot(ing) personal growth rather than corporate gain (and) speak with many voices, many dialects.”

Having long ago abandoned its promise, and given its substantial corporate and government funding, NPR is indistinguishable from the rest of the corporate media, just as corrupted, and consider its former head, Kevin Klose.

He was president from December 1998-September 2008 and CEO from 1998-January 2009. Earlier he was US propaganda director as head of the Voice of America (VOA), Radio Liberty, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, Worldnet Television, and the anti-Castro Radio/TV Marti, so he fit easily into his new role.

On January 5, 2009, Vivian Schiller succeeded him as president and CEO. Her official bio says she was previously with “The New York Times Company where she served as Senior Vice President and General Manager of NYTimes.com.”

She’ll oversea “all NPR operations and initiatives, including the organization’s critical partnerships with our 800+ member stations, and their service to the more than 26 million people who listen to NPR programming every week.” Most don’t know they’re getting the same corporate propaganda and “junk food news” or that NPR calls itself “public” to conceal its real agenda, and why critics call it “National Pentagon or Petroleum Radio” with good reason.

Created by the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) calls itself “a private, nonprofit corporation created by Congress… and is the steward of the federal government’s investment in public broadcasting. It helps support the operations of more than 1,100 locally-owned and-operated public television and radio stations nationwide, and is the largest single source of funding for research, technology, and program development for public radio, television and related online services.”

Like NPR, it’s heavily corporate and government funded and provides similar services for them. Under George Bush, former Voice of America director Kenneth Tomlinson was chairman of CPB’s Board of Governors until an internal 2005 investigation forced him out for repeatedly braking the law.

On September 16, 2009, a CPB press release announced that “The board of directors (of the CPB) today elected Dr. Ernest Wilson III (as) chairman and re-elected… CEO Beth Courtney (as) vice-chair.”

Wilson previously held senior policy positions as Director of International Programs and Resources on the National Security Council. He was also Policy and Planning Unit Director for the US Information Agency and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

Beth Courtney is a George Bush appointee, a past chairman of the board of America’s Public Television Stations and present CPB vice chairman. Currently she also serves on the boards of Satellite Educational Resources Consortium, the Organization of State Broadcasting Executives, the National Forum for Public Television Executives, and the National Educational Telecommunications Association along with other appropriate credentials for her re-appointment.

In its May/June 2004 “Extra” report, FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) asked “How Public Is Public Radio? Writers Steve Rendall and Daniel Butterworth quoted past head Kevin Klose saying:

“All of us believe our goal is to serve the entire democracy, the entire country.”

Not according to FAIR on “every on-air source quoted in June 2003 on four of (NPR’s) news shows: All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Weekend Edition Saturday and Weekend Edition Sunday.” Each guest was classified “by occupation, gender, nationality, and partisan affiliation.” Combined, 2,334 sources from 804 stories were quoted.

FAIR found that NPR relies on the same dominant sources as the major media that include government officials, professional experts, and corporate representatives nearly two-thirds of the time.

Spokespeople for public interest groups accounted for 7% of total sources, and ordinary people appeared mostly in “one-sentence soundbites.”

Male guests outnumbered women about 4-1, and those quoted most often came from the same elite categories as men.

Overall, NPR represents the same dominant interests as the major commercial media — conservative, pro-business, pro-war, pro-Israel, and very much against the public interest while pretending to support it.

FAIR analyzed PBS’s flagship NewsHour guest list and drew similar conclusions. Like NPR, it’s ideologically right and usually censors progressive content and public interest programming. In a 1990 NewsHour evaluation, FAIR compared its content to ABC’s Nightline and found that it presented “an even narrower segment of the political spectrum.” It then conducted an October 2005-March 2006 analysis of all of its programs, got similar results, and determined that NewHour is even more ideologically right than NPR that tilts far in that direction itself.

FAIR concluded that NPR and NewsHour content “overwhelmingly represent those in power rather than the public” they’re obliged to serve. While masquerading as public programming, they betray their listeners and viewers by offering the same propaganda and “junk food news” as the dominant corporate media. Considering their funding sources, what else would they do.

An October 6 NPR story is typical of most others. It charged Hugo Chavez with “Targeting Opponents For Arrest.” Reporter Juan Forero claimed “dozens of university students” went on hunger strike outside OAS headquarters in Caracas on September 28 along with others “across the country… in support of Julio Cesar Rivas, a student who was arrested during an anti-government demonstration in August….”

Rivas is the coordinator and founder of Juventud Activa de Venezuela Unida (United Active Youth of Venezuela – JAVU). Earlier, he was part of a staged, violent street protest against Venezuela’s new Education Law. The government says JAVU acts as “shock troops” in opposition protests and is liberally funded by the National Endowment of Democracy (NED), International Republican Institute (IRI), and US Agency or International Development (USAID) to disrupt internal Venezuelan affairs. It’s a familiar scheme, repeated numerous times in the past, to discredit and disrupt the Chavez government in hopes of eventually ousting it.

JAVU has about 80,000 members in most Venezuelan states, and its blog site calls for bringing down the government and supporting the Honduran military coup.

Rivas was released on September 29, but must appear for trial. He’s a Washington-funded provocateur, charged with resisting arrest, instigating crime, conspiracy, inciting rebellion, damaging public property, and using “generic” weapons.

While in custody, Venezuela Public Defender Gabriela Ramirez assured him in person that his full constitutional rights will be protected. Street protests still continue and have been countered by pro-Chavez ones calling for “peace and tolerance.” According to the Federation of Bolivarian students’ Carlos Sierra:

Opposition “students are being used and manipulated by the top leadership of the irrational opposition, which, via the (dominant) media, send them to generate violence and terrorism in the country” much like on previous occasions.

But according to NPR’s Forero, Rivas was “sent to one of Venezuela’s most infamous prisons” where other government opponents are held as political prisoners. Chavez “has been jailing dozens of key opponents – some of them students, some of them veteran politicians” in citing unnamed “human rights groups and constitutional experts (claiming) Venezuela is increasingly singling out and imprisoning its foes in politically motivated witch hunts.”

Forero didn’t mention that Rivas fomented violence. Others arrested also broke the law. No one is a political prisoner, and all Venezuelans get fair and equitable trials, unlike in America where real political arrests, prosecutions and convictions happen regularly against innocent targeted victims — a topic NPR and PBS won’t touch except to vilify them publicly on-air.

Nor do they report truthfully on Occupied Palestine. On October 12, 2009, on NPR’s Morning Edition, reporter Renee Montagne practically extolled Israeli racism in stating:

“There is a new enemy for some Israelis: romance between Jewish women and Arab men, (so) vigilantes have banded together to fight it.” She means from “Jewish settlements” that “have sprung up (in) traditionally Arab” East Jerusalem, but won’t admit they’re on stolen Palestinian land.

NPR’s Sheera Frankel joined a patrol, implied Arabs are inferior to Jews, and suggested they pose a danger to Jewish women and girls. She described vigilantes on the lookout for “Arab-Jewish couples (to) break up their dates,” suggesting it’s the right thing to do, but never questioning the legitimacy of settlements, vigilante violence in East Jerusalem, its lawless disregard for the law, or great harm to innocent people. Instead she called “mixed couples a growing epidemic” of miscegenation — typical of NPR’s racism and one-sided support for Israel.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ)

The WSJ is Dow Jones & Company’s flagship publication, now a News Corp. one since Rupert Murdoch bought it in August 2007. Stating its ideology up front, it says it supports “free markets and free people” as well as “free trade and sound money; against confiscatory taxation and the ukases (edicts) of kings and other collectivists; and for individual autonomy against dictators, bullies and even the tempers of momentary majorities.”

In October 2007, FAIR bemoaned the Murdock takeover because of his “penchant for using his holdings as vehicles for his personal (views) and business interests.” Earlier FAIR and the Columbia Journalism Review criticized its editorial page for inaccuracy, extreme bias, and dishonesty.

The Journal is unapologetic in saying its philosophy “make(s) no pretense of walking down the middle of the road. Our comments and interpretations are made from a definite point of view…. We oppose all infringements on individual rights, whether (from) private monopoly, labor union monopoly or from an overgrowing government. (We’re) not much interested in labels but if we were to choose one, we would say we are radical.”

Radical can be revolutionary and beneficial when it backs fundamental progressive change and reform. Webster defines it as:

“marked by a considerable departure from the usual and traditional: extreme; tending or disposed to make extreme changes in existing views, habits, conditions, or institutions; of, relating to, or constituting a political (or perhaps business) group associated with views, practices, and policies of extreme change; (or) advocating extreme measures to retain or restore a political state of affairs” such the radical right represented by the WSJ’s management and editorial writers.

Critics agree that they’re on the far right extremist fringe, a supporter of voodoo economics, tax cuts for the rich, a staunch defender of executive privilege, and disdainful of anything to the left of their views as witnessed daily by some of the most outlandish, one-sided, pro-business commentaries countenancing no alternatives, with the rarest of rare exceptions showing up to make the paper look fair, which it’s not.

Consider editorial board member Mary O’Grady in her weekly Americas column on “politics, economics and business in Latin America and Canada.” Her extremism is unmatched. Her style is agitprop; her space a truth-free zone; her language hateful and vindictive; her tone malicious and slanderous; her style bare-knuckled thuggishness; and her material calculating, mendacious, and shameless. Yet she’s a WSJ regular and an award-winning op-ed writer, but surely no journalist according to Webster’s definition:

“writing characterized by a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation.”

O’Grady fails on both counts. She’s a kind of print version of Fox News‘ Glenn Beck, who promotes himself on glennbeck.com looking arrogant in a uniform reminiscent of the Nazi SS.

Consider O’Grady’s support for the Washington-backed June 28 Honduran coup ousting a democratically elected president. It was followed by months of mass arrests, disappearances, killings, targeting the independent media, suspending the Constitution, declaring martial law, and threatening the Brazilian embassy’s sovereignty where President Manuel Zelaya took refuge after returning.

In one of her many pro-coup articles, O’Grady (on July 13) headlined “Why Honduras Sent Zelaya Away.” In a “perfect world,” according to her, he “would be in jail in his own country right now, awaiting trial. The Honduran attorney general (part of the coup regime) has charged him with deliberately violating Honduran law and the Supreme Court (stacked with pro-coup justices) ordered his arrest in Tegucigalpa on June 28,” the day of the coup.

“But the Honduran military whisked him out of the country, to Costa Rica,” to save itself the embarrassment of jailing a democratically elected leader whose lawful actions were endorsed by the majority of Hondurans wanting progressive constitutional change and a president willing to give it to them.

Yet according to O’Grady, “Mr. Zelaya’s detention was legal, as was his official removal from office by Congress…. Besides eagerly trampling the constitution, Mr. Zelaya had demonstrated that he was ready to employ the violent tactics of ‘chavismo’ to hang onto power. The decision to pack him off immediately was taken in the interest of protecting both constitutional order and human life.”

In fact, Zelaya neither espoused or practiced violence, and his call for a public June 28 vote on whether to hold a referendum for a new Constitutional Convention at the same time as the November elections lawfully asked for a “yes” or “no” on one question:

“Do you think that the November 2009 general elections should include a fourth ballot box (the other three were for candidates) in order to make a decision about the creation of a National Constitutional Assembly that would approve a new Constitution?”

According to Article 5 of the 2006 Honduran “Civil Participation Act,” government officials may hold non-binding inquiries (referenda) to determine popular support for proposed measures. Gauging sentiment for a National Constituent Assembly for a new Constitution is legal.

Yet in her June 28 article titled, “Honduras Defends Its Democracy,” O’Grady falsely claimed Zelaya planned “a constitutional rewrite (following) a national referendum” only the Congress can approve. In fact, Zelaya called for a vote to assess public sentiment, pro or con, on whether Hondurans want a Constitutional Convention, an act no different from a public opinion poll that’s perfectly legal or should be anywhere. But according to O’Grady, Zelaya “decided he would run the referendum himself.” It’s typical O’Grady truth reversal that earns her weekly space on the WSJ’s op-ed page.

The BBC’s Long Tradition As An Imperial Tool

State-owned and funded, it’s tradition is long, unbroken, and disturbing as the world’s largest and most influential broadcaster reaching global audiences in 32 languages. From inception in 1925, it’s been reliably pro-government and pro-business, or as its founder Lord Reith wrote the establishment: “They know they can trust us not to be really impartial.” Neither he or his successors disappointed on topics mattering most, including war and peace, corporate crimes, US-UK duplicity, labor rights, democratic freedoms, human and civil rights, social justice, and Western imperialism.

They’re consistently distorted, suppressed, marginalized or ignored throughout decades of misreporting despite claiming “honesty (and) integrity (is) what the BBC stands for (because it’s) free from political influence and commercial pressure.”

As a propaganda service, its record is uncompromisingly anti-union, pro-business, and dependably safe for Whitehall and its allies. It moralizes Western aggression, bashes independent democratic leaders, and cheerleads for the powerful at the expense of providing real news and information for millions believing BBC is credible. For over eight decades, it’s record is solid and predictable — betraying the public trust to reliably serve the powerful. The tradition continues.

Prominent TV Demagogues

Among the many, consider a select few. For example, CNN’s Lou Dobbs, “Mr. Independent” he calls himself. Critics use more descriptive terms, yet according to his loudobbs.tv.cnn.com bio:

He’s “anchor and managing editor of CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight (and also anchor of) a nationally syndicated financial news radio report, The Lou Dobbs Financial Report….” In addition, he writes a weekly CNN.com commentary, is an author and award-winning “journalist,” most recently in 2005 when “the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awarded (him) the Emmy for Lifetime Achievement” for serving the usual special interests nightly on prime time TV.

In June 2004, he also won “the Eugene Katz Award for Excellence in the Coverage of Immigration from the Center for Immigration Studies for his ongoing series ‘Broken Borders,’ which examines US policy towards illegal immigration.” Little wonder in an August 2006 article, this writer called him CNN’s Vice President of Racism. He’s also a paid liar and in America wins awards.

In May 2008, a Media Matters Action Network report titled, “Fear & Loathing in Prime Time: Immigration Myths and Cable News” highlighted undocumented Latino hatemongering by Dobbs, Bill O’Reilly, and Glenn Beck, each claiming:

• an alleged connection between undocumented Latinos and crime; in fact, clear evidence shows they’re no more likely to break laws than American citizens;
• how they exploit social services and don’t pay taxes; in fact, undocumented immigrants are ineligible, without proof of legal status, for Medicaid, food stamps, State Children’s Health Insurance (SCHIP) and welfare; they do pay income, payroll, property, sales and other taxes and are entitled to public education; according to the National Academy of Sciences, immigrants provide a net annual gain of up to $10 billion to US GDP; according to Rand Corp. economist James P. Smith, the “net present value of the gains from those immigrants who arrived since 1980 would be $333 billion.”
• the “reconquista” myth about a supposed Mexican plot to take over the US Southwest; and
• an epidemic of Latino voter fraud that, according to Dobbs’ incessant drumbeat, puts America’s “democracy absolutely in jeopardy.”

He also propagates the myth that undocumented Latinos caused an increase in US leprosy (or Hansen’s disease). In an on-air April 2005 report (among others), correspondent Christine Romans quoted “medical lawyer” Dr. Madeleine Cosman saying:

“We have some enormous problems with horrendous diseases that are being brought into America by illegal aliens (including) leprosy….” Romans added that, according to Cosman, “there were about 900 (US) cases of leprosy for 40 years. There have been 7,000 in the past three years.”

According to a May 2007 60 Minutes report, the National Hansen’s Disease Program (NHDP) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reported that “7,000 is the number of leprosy cases over the last 30 years, not the past three, and nobody knows how many of those cases involve illegal immigrants.” NHDP added that from 2002-2005 (the timeline of Cosman’s claim), only 398 cases occurred. To that, Dobbs responded: “If we reported it, it’s a fact.”

Founded in 1971, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is internationally known for its activism against hate groups and scoring legal victories against white supremacists. It says Dobbs regularly features inaccurate racist reports and features anti-immigrant hatemongers like:

• Glenn Spencer, head of the anti-immigration American Patrol, whose web site highlights anti-Mexican vitriol and the idea that Mexico plans a secret takeover of the Southwest;
• Joe McCutchen, head of the anti-immigration Protect Arkansas Now group, that Dobbs calls “a terrific group of concerned, caring Americans;”
• Paul Streitz, co-founder of Connecticut Citizens for Immigration Control, who once denounced Mayor John DeStefano, Jr. for “turning New Haven into a banana republic;”
• Barbara Coe, leader of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform who routinely calls Mexicans “savages;” and
• Chris Simcox, co-founder of the Minuteman Project and a leading anti-immigration figure.

SPLC explains that Dobbs “doggedly explores and supports the anti-immigration movement (and) won’t report salient negative facts about anti-immigration leaders he approves of….”

Instead, he falsely claims that:

• “just about a third of the prison population in this country is estimated to be illegal aliens;”
• states have been “overwhelmed by criminal illegal aliens;” and
• US borders are “unprotected” allowing “criminal illegal aliens (to) murder police officers.”

In 2007 alone, the connection between illegal immigration and crime was discussed on 94 episodes of Lou Dobbs Tonight, and dozens more focused on an “army of invaders,” immigrants not paying taxes, draining social services, and threatening our white Anglo-Saxon culture.

CNN reporters Casey Wian, Bill Tucker, Kitty Pilgrim and others present a steady diet of subtle and overt racism to incite viewers to believe it. Through constant repetition, it propagates the myth, and according to the Media Matters Action Network report:

Dobbs “is hailed by the entire spectrum of immigration opponents, from the reasonable to the unreasonable. And the degree to which extremist elements see (him) as an ally indicates at the very least that they believe he is helping their cause” because they feel he’s a populist crusader.

Yet according to a July 30 New York Observer report, recent Nielsen data showed that after Dobbs began reporting (on July 15) that Barack Obama’s birth certificate was fraudulent (an apparent stunt to increase ratings), his viewership dropped significantly — 15% overall and 27% in the valued 25-54 age category.

Fox News Channel (FNC)

When it debuted in 1996, one of its on-air hosts said:

The “Channel was launched (because) something was wrong with news media… somewhere bias found its way into reporting… Fox… is committed to being fair and balanced (covering) stories everybody is reporting — and… stories… you will see only on Fox.”

Later the Columbia Journalism Review said several former Fox employees “complained of ‘management sticking their fingers’ in the writing and editing stories to cook the facts to make a story more palatable to right-of-center tastes.” But it hasn’t hurt ratings.

As of Q 1 2009, FNC was the second highest rated cable channel in prime time total viewers. CNN ranked 17th and MSNBC 24th. The O’Reilly Factor has been #1 rated on cable news for 100 consecutive months and gained 27% more viewers year-over-year. Glenn Beck increased 90% over the previous year. Overall, FNC topped CNN and MSNBC combined in prime time total audience.

Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) said “Fox’s signature political news show, Special Report with Brit Hume (now with Bret Baier) was originally created as a daily one-hour update devoted to the 1998 Clinton sex scandal.” In the past year, it gained 39% more viewers.

As for accuracy and being “fair and balanced,” FAIR (in summer 2001) called FNC “The Most Biased Name in News,” yet according to Murdoch in March 2001:

“I challenge anybody to show me an example of bias in Fox News Channel.”

In FAIR’s Seth Ackerman article and later ones, FNC’s blatant manipulation of the news is exposed. For example, Bret Baier’s “Political Grapevine” is a right-wing “hot sheet” featuring a “series of gossipy items culled from other right-wing” sources. It and other reports are blatantly partisan propaganda against “liberal media bias,” progressives, environmentalists, anti-war activists, civil rights groups, and others to the left of their views.

According to FAIR, the commentary on political punditry programs like The O’Reilly Factor, the Sean Hannity Show, and The Beltway Boys is so slanted that it’s like watching “a Harlem Globetrotters game (knowing) which side is supposed to win.”

FNC’s Bill O’Reilly

His official bio calls The O’Reilly Factor “a unique blend of news analysis and hard hitting investigative reporting dropped each weeknight into ‘The No Spin Zone.” He also hosts a syndicated radio show, writes a weekly column carried in over 300 newspapers, and authored several books that according to New York Times writer Janet Maslin were “either (done) with a collaborator or (O’Reilly) was born with a ghostwriter’s gift for filling space with platitudes….” With good reason, Maslin called him “one of the most controversial human beings in the world….”

In an October 2008 report titled “Smearcasting,” FAIR called him an “Islamophobe” for spreading “fear, bigotry and misinformation” along with 11 other popular figures, including Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin (another FNC regular), David Horowitz, and Pat Robertson.

After 9/11, FAIR said O’Reilly proposed attacking a list of Muslim countries “if they did not submit to the US — starting with Afghanistan.”

On air he said:

“The US should bomb the Afghan infrastructure to rubble — the airport, the power plants, their water facilities and the roads…. If they don’t rise up against this primitive country, they starve, period.”

Iraq must also be destroyed he said, and “the population made to endure yet another round of intense pain.” As for Libya, “Nothing goes in, nothing goes out…. Let them eat sand.”

FAIR called his penchant for attacking Muslim countries “an O’Reilly trademark”, and “his disregard for Muslim civilians is matched by the anti-Muslim sentiments he frequently expresses on both his nationally syndicated radio show, the Radio Factor,” reaching 3.5 million listeners, and his top-rated FNC show.

Some of his hateful comments include saying:

• areas of London are “just packed with just dense Muslim neighborhoods, which breed this kind of contempt for Western society. Why do they let them in;”
• “We’re at war with Muslim fanatics. So all young Muslims should be subject to (special) scrutiny, (saying it’s not racial, just) “criminal profiling;”
• “the most unattractive women in the world are probably in Muslim countries;” and
• in Iraq, he blamed killing on Islam: “They’re all Muslims, and they’re doing what they do. They’re killing each other. And they’re killing Americans.”

O’Reilly is equally racist about Latino immigrants with frequent comments like:

“The extreme elements in this country want open borders, blanket amnesty, and entitlement for foreign nationals who have come here illegally, and generally want to change the demographics in the USA so political power can be assumed by the left. That is the end game.” He also argues that “Low-skilled immigrant labor costs the taxpayers today $19,000 to (subsidize) people who are using the hospitals (and) the education system…. These are rock-solid stats,” but O’Reilly won’t say from where.

They’re blatantly false and may be from a May 2007 Robert Rector/Christine Kim (right-wing think tank) Heritage Foundation paper titled, “The Fiscal Cost of Low-Skill Immigrants to State and Local Taxpayers.”

O’Reilly spreads daily misinformation, innuendo, and hateful demagoguery to millions of his daily faithful. Like the others above, they’re paid liars delivering what passes for today’s major media journalism. It’s why so much of the public is misinformed and the reason more hate groups than ever proliferate.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), they numbered 926 in 2008, up from 602 in 2000 and are “animated by the national immigration debate.” Since Obama took office, they’re also driven by their hatred of a black president, exacerbated by a growing economic crisis that’s easy to blame on the undocumented and a non-white head of state.

These groups are ideologically vicious and extremely dangerous when motivated by racist right-wing media commentators reaching far larger audiences than more saner voices drowned out. It’s more evidence of social decay and the urgent need for change.

The Right-Wing Media Attack ACORN

Founded in 1970, ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) “is the nation’s largest grassroots community organization of low and moderate income people with over 400,000 member families organized into more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in about 75 cities across the country.”

As the nation’s preeminent community organizing group, it backs a living wage, opposes predatory lending and foreclosures, supports affordable housing, better public schools, welfare reform, voting rights, rebuilding New Orleans, and other social and economic justice issues.

For many months as a result, right-wing extremists have tried to discredit its successes online and through the media. Led by Fox News, Lou Dobbs, and others, it’s accused of financial corruption, massive voter fraud, and other indiscretions, mostly fabricated to destroy the group’s credibility, cut off its funding, and harm other community organizing efforts. However, compared to corporate fraud and abuse scandals, ACORN’s occasional missteps are minor, insignificant, and undeserving of inflammatory media headlines.

Nonetheless recent news stories featured false accusations that ACORN engages in prostitution nationwide. The supposed evidence came from two right-wing filmmakers (Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe) posing as prostitute and pimp, conveniently videotaped for airing. In prime time especially, Fox News, Lou Dobbs and others featured it nightly.

On September 14, Dobbs reported “another pimp and prostitute scandal at the left-wing activist organization ACORN. For the third time, ACORN workers for the left-wing advocacy group (got) caught on hidden camera breaking the law. Now calls from Congress to investigate and cut off public funding are growing.”

According to Fox News‘ Bill O’Reilly, “With more than 30 criminal ‘convictions’ on its resume, the organization cannot be trusted.” Based on no credible evidence, other FNC reports accuse ACORN of “operat(ing) as a criminal enterprise,” including prostitution, running a prostitution ring, filing false documents with taxing and other government authorities, bank fraud, violating immigration laws, transporting women and children to America for immoral purposes, and impairing the welfare of minors.

More evidence of reprehensible innuendo, distortion, deceit, and misinformation from major media paid liars. It’s why web sites like this one gain followers.

Michael Yates: Corporate America began to wage what turned out to be a one-sided war against working people in the mid-to late-1970s, when it became apparent that the post-World War Two “Golden Age” of U.S. capitalism was over. As profit rates fell, businesses began to develop a strategy for restoring them. This strategy had many prongs, and one of them was ideological, that is, a struggle for “hearts and minds,” to use a military term now being applied to Afghanistan. The presumed failure of Keynesian economics, marked by the simultaneous existence of escalating inflation and unemployment, gave the ideological struggle its foundation. Maybe there had been too many restrictions placed on the market, and these restrictions (minimum wages, health and safety regulations, laws facilitating union organizing in labor markets; public assistance in the form of money grants, housing subsidies, and the like; restrictions on the flow of money internationally) had led to results opposite those that liberal Keynesians had thought most likely. If these complex arguments could be tied to simple cliches, like “get the government off our backs,” “the unions have gotten too powerful” (with always a hint that they are too radical thrown into the argument), and “welfare queens” (with that always popular whiff of racism), they could provide ideological cover for what was really a matter of corporate economics, namely the making of money.

This ideological attack bore fruit quickly. President Carter appointed Paul Volcker to chair the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and Volcker, under the guise of fighting inflation, immediately began to snuff the life out of working class communities by forcing interest rates up to nearly 20 percent. Today, Volcker is treated like a hero by Democrats and above reproach (though ignored by President Obama’s more right-wing economic advisors), which shows just how far to the right economic discourse has moved. What Carter began, Reagan completed, firing the Air Traffic Controllers and putting the nail in labor’s coffin. Behind the scenes in all of this and growing in strength for the next twenty years (funded by wealthy business leaders) or so were the right-wing think tanks you mention. Just as retired generals go to work for military contractors and defeated politicians become lobbyists, government economic advisors get jobs at Heritage or the American Enterprise Institute or the Cato Institute. The staffs of these ideological centers churn out endless position papers and studies, which find their way into our newspapers and the offices of our congresspersons. A gigantic network of professors, journalists, politicians, lobbyists, and, today, a television network (Fox) bombard us with right-wing propaganda. That all of this has been successful is seen by the fact that the shibboleths of neoliberalism—such as the needs for privatization of public entities, the free reign of markets, the obviousness of the success of welfare reform, the evils of raising the minimum wage—are all commonplaces today.

While the public now knows that something is rotten, I am not sure that neoliberal ideas are so under attack that they will lose their sway. I think that the tenacity of these ideas owes something to the lack of an ideological alternative, which, in turn, is due to the abject failure of organized labor to provide one. For example, we need universal health care. Labor, however, has not consistently argued in favor of this or supported it at all. Now Congress is poised to enact healthcare legislation that might well be worse than the profit-driven system we have all come to hate. Labor should refuse to support this legislation, but I doubt it will. Then, when the new healthcare plans fail to deliver the goods, the right-wing will be lying in wait, ready to pounce and say, “See, we told you so. The government always makes things worse.” In other words, until there is a radical ideology to replace right-wing thinking, the latter is unlikely to lose its drawing power.

Fred Magdoff: Although these institutions were very successful, along with a number of other forces, in shaping public attitudes toward the economy, the reality of the current severe economic conditions are causing many, including some economists, to rethink their views of how “efficiently” markets function in the real world (as opposed to their ideological make-believe world) and that some different approaches may be needed. People seem to understand that the “big players” played a major role in the crisis, but most of the anger has been placed on the outrageous salaries of the top echelon. Of course, this is just “chump change” compared to the massive amounts at that are transferred to the wealthy through the speculative casino that our economy has become.

　
MW: Socialism has a huge public relations problem. Wouldn’t you agree that socialism has been effectively discredited in the U.S. media and that, even now–with unemployment soaring at 10 percent and more than 300,000 foreclosures per month–the average American worker still believes in the virtues of capitalism? How do you explain this phenomenon?

Michael Yates: Part of my answer here can be seen in my response to your first question. Socialism has, indeed, been discredited here, partly due to its rejection by its natural supporter, namely the labor movement. The CIO expelled in the late 1940s and early 1950s the left-wing forces who built the great industrial unions. When it did this, it abandoned the worker-centered ideology that might have laid the basis for support here for at least the kind of social democracy we find in the Scandinavian nations. This left the ideological field to the enemies of social democracy and socialism. Of course, we cannot ignore the long and inglorious history of police-state repression of those persons and organizations that championed socialism. Our government has never hesitated to arrest, imprison, and even kill the enemies of capitalism. So it has been dangerous to be a radical here, though not so much today when radical ideas aren’t taken seriously and there are no powerful radical organizations left. Suppose that after the Second World War, the left in the labor movement had grown, and the left-led unions had continued to successfully organize workers and win good collective bargaining agreements. Suppose that they had built upon their impressive worker education programs, made inroads in the South, and fought hard against U.S. imperialism and the Cold War. We might have a much different political terrain on which to fight today.

Two other factors that must be considered in the attachment of the working class to capitalism are racism and imperialism. In the past, employers routinely pitted white workers against black, and one weapon they used was to associate black workers (and the civil rights movement) with communism (It was interesting to note in this connection the attempts to make Obama out to be a radical socialist). The claim that black union supporters were reds helped to solidify white support for capitalism. By the same token, anti-imperialist struggles in the poor nations of the world (often former colonies of the rich countries) were typically led by political radicals. These could be made out to be anti-American, and then those in the United States who allied themselves with these struggles could also be labeled anti-American, despite the fact that they might also be supportive of policies that would benefit working people. The schools and the media could be counted out not to try to set anyone straight on any of this.

Now, having said this, I must also say that to the extent that left forces in the United States identified themselves uncritically with the former Soviet Union and its extremely undemocratic political system, they sometimes played into the hands of those opposed to socialism. And I must also admit that socialist forces were, at their strongest, never powerful enough here to force their best ideals permanently into the consciousness of the working class majority. Finally, in the past, the success of capitalism in the United States allowed for some sharing of the wealth with workers, and this, too, made people less willing to entertain radical ideas.

Old and deeply ingrained ideas die hard, and unless there are forces at work to develop new ones and unless there is at least widespread experimentation with new ways to organize production and distribution, little is likely to change, even in the face of economic catastrophe, such as so may working men and women are facing right now. Quite the contrary, workers might be persuaded that actions detrimental to their long-term self-interest need to be taken, such as, for example, draconian measures against immigrants.

Fred Magdoff: There is no question that the term socialism has a public relations problem. But while it’s true that most people don’t fully understand the basic workings of the capitalist system nor what socialism is, there are indications that many people are ready to talk about alternatives—and that includes socialism. The positive public response to Michael Moore’s movie, Capitalism, is one indication. But a Rasmussen poll last spring found that only 58% of American’s say that capitalism is better than socialism. For adults under 30, 37% preferred capitalism and 33% preferred socialism. It’s not clear what the poll results really mean. But it does indicate that people are willing to hear about and talk about alternatives to capitalism.
　
MW: In a chapter titled “Neoliberlism” you focus on the disparity of wealth in the US today. Here’s an excerpt:

By 2006 the top 1 percent of households received close to a quarter of all income and the top 10 percent got 50 percent of the income pie. In 2006, the 400 richest Americans had a collective net wealth of $1.6 trillion, more than the combined wealth of the bottom 150 million people. This degree of income and wealth inequality was last seen just before the beginning of the Great Depression. (pg 50)

Let’s ignore the moral issue for now, and focus on the supply/demand question. Is it possible for an economy to produce sufficient demand when more and more of the wealth and income goes to the upper 5 or 10 percent of the population? (isn’t this proof that capitalism is inherently crisis-prone?)

Michael Yates: If a certain amount of output is produced, an equal amount of income is generated. So, conceptually, there could be enough demand to buy the output, no matter that the incomes generated are getting more unequally distributed. It certainly has been the case that the rich people now getting such a large share of the pie spend gobs of money. And rich foreigners spend a great deal of money in the United States as well. However, the rich also save a lot of money (the more they get, the more they save), and this money does not enter immediately into the spending flow. Working people, on the other hand, can be counted on, by virtue of the limited income that they command, to spend all of their income. Therefore, the more income the rich have, the more savings there will be, and, unless some way is found to convert all this saving into spending on newly-produced goods and services, the more likely it is that there will be a crisis caused by not enough spending (and its corollaries of unsold goods and services and unemployed labor). If we understand that growing inequality is the normal trajectory of capitalist economies, a trajectory only mitigated by the power of organized working people to win a bigger share of the pie for themselves and to compel the government to intervene in the marketplace on their behalf, then it is correct to say that capitalist economies are crisis-prone for this reason alone.

Growing inequality also creates other potential problems for the system. Sometimes it can generate a political crisis, a crisis of legitimacy so to speak. The rich exert tremendous political power, and this power grows as those at the top command a larger and larger share of a society’s income. To the rest of us, the game looks increasingly rigged, with us having little chance to improve our circumstances through individual efforts. More inequality also has harmful social and economic consequences that we don’t normally think of. Recent research has shown that if we compare two entities (two states in the United States, for example) with equal average incomes but different degrees of inequality, then the place with more unequal incomes will also have higher rates of infant mortality, arrest and imprisonment, school dropouts, low infant birth weights, and many other measures of social well-being. Growing inequality actually kills some of us, makes some of us sicker, and puts some of us in jail.

I want to add an important point. To say that capitalist economies are crisis-prone, because of a tendency toward income inequality or whatever other reason, is not the same as saying that these economies are on their deathbeds, no matter how severe a crisis may be. It is possible for an economy to exist in a crisis or a prolonged period of slow growth (stagnation) without it being ready to collapse. In the end, it is political struggle, that is, class struggle, that truly destabilizes an economy and generates conditions in which it is possible to imagine the birth of a new system.

Fred Magdoff: It is one of the many contradictions of the system. If ordinary folk are paid well they can buy a lot of stuff and help keep the system going. So from the point of view of the system as a whole, higher paid workers would help the economy. However, there is only one driving force for individual capitalists–and that’s to make as much money as possible. What might be better for the overall economy can be of no concern to the individual trying to maximize profits. For an analogy, let’s take a look at ocean fishing. Almost every fish species is being fished to the point at which the population crashes. It would make sense for all of the companies operating the large trawlers to cooperate and fish less in order to preserve the resource on which they depend. So what’s good for their long-term future is sacrificed as each individually tries to maximize their catch and therefore profits.

MW: Here’s another excerpt from the book: “In 2006, the financial sector employed about 6 percent of the workers but ‘produced’ 40 percent of the profits of all domestic firms.”(pg 56) A few paragraphs later you add that, “Making money without actually making something turned out to be the largest growth sector of the U.S. economy from the early 1980s to the present crisis.”

This seems to imply that as manufacturing and other parts of the “real” economy have become less lucrative, the trading of paper assets has become Wall Street’s new profit-center, the Golden Goose. What impact has the “financialization” of the economy had on ordinary working people?

Michael Yates: I think that an answer here has two parts. First, it was the neoliberal “revolution” begun in the 1970s that did immense harm to working people. For example, unionization rates began to fall dramatically in the 1980s, as Reagan began his “magic of the marketplace” assault on the working class. Real wages (the purchasing power of our paychecks) began to stagnate in the 1970s and are not much higher today than then. Relatively high-wage public employment began to endure a long period of privatization, which also damaged working class living standards. The move toward “free trade” did workers here no good, as manufacturing began to flee our shores for low-wage havens abroad. None of these things had to do with financialization per se.

Second, however, once the neoliberal attack on working class living standards took hold and incomes began to flow upward, those with a great deal more money began to look for ways to put this money to work. The corporations that they owned also had higher profits, and they did the same. The United States has always had a robust financial sector, though in the past, it was not the tail that wagged the dog as far as our system of production and distribution was concerned. Neoliberalism brought with it a deregulation of international movements of money and goods and services. [It is important to note that we see neoliberalism as a political response to capital’s quest for restored profits beginning in the mid-1970s when the post-Second World War two economic boom ended and the slow growth (stagnation) common to mature capitalist economies reasserted itself.] These, in turn, required a certain amount of financial innovation, to reduce, for example, the risks of fluctuations in currency exchange rates and sharp changes in political conditions that could threaten investments. From these innovations came still more, until finance began to take on a life of its own. And while neoliberalism and direct corporate actions inside workplaces did reduce costs and raise profits, they did not create nearly enough capital spending opportunities (investment) to absorb the growing individual savings and business profits. Finance of one kind or another then began to be seen as a place to dispose of surplus and make still more money. Leveraged buyouts, stock market speculations, real estate “investments,” all took off from the 1980s on, absorbing money that could not find enough opportunities in the real economy of production. As these things happened, financial “innovation” exploded, with all of the alphabet soup of financial instruments we describe in our book.

This explosion of finance proved detrimental to working people in a number of ways. Leveraged buyouts inevitably resulted in the hollowing out of what were often perfectly viable businesses. Companies were saddled with debt, assets were stripped and sold, and workers were furloughed by the tens of thousands. The inflation of asset values gave rise to the notion that it was the job of managers to increase the share price of their businesses—in any way possible. Businesses came to be thought of as mere collections of assets rather than entities that produced things. Asset inflation gave rise to asset speculation and the development of ever more complex financial instruments, all leading sooner or later to financial bubbles and the inevitable bursting of the bubbles. As we have seen, the bursting of financial bubbles has had tremendously negative impacts on working people: shuttered workplaces and unemployment to name but the primary ones. The last bubble, in real estate markets, was harmful to workers not only after it burst but also as it was developing. In the aftermath of the dot.com bubble, Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Fed Board of Governors, directed Fed policy to pressure interest rates down to very low levels. This helped to push loose money into real estate. As house prices began to rise, banks and brokers started to encourage working people to do two things: borrow money against the appreciated value of their homes and buy homes, either as first-time buyers or as purchasers of more expensive homes (after selling old ones). Working people were eager to do both because they saw houses as sources of cash to compensate for stagnating household incomes and as a form of wealth that could help secure them against the hazards of ill health, lost pensions, or college-age children needing money for school. Working class households began to take on large amounts of debt, making themselves more vulnerable, even as they thought they were making wise financial decisions. Ironically, those who saw their incomes rise so high because of neoliberalism were now, in effect, loaning money to those who didn’t fare so well. As banks accumulated mortgages, farsighted Wall Street swindlers saw golden opportunities to develop a slew of new financial instruments based upon the packaging and repackaging of mortgages into new and exotic instruments. Greenspan played their shill, arguing that they had uncovered the secret of hedging infallibly against risk. From here it was but a short step to the criminal schemes of Countrywide and a host of other financial institutions. The billions of dollars made were used not only to finance a new gilded age of revoltingly lavish consumption but to corral the most tractable politicians money could buy.

Fred Magdoff: Financialization of the economy created the possibilities for people to take on more and more debt—credit cards, new cars, 2nd mortgages, etc. It was the selling of a lifestyle way beyond people’s ability to pay for it plus the easy access of loans that created the bind that many people find themselves in today. In essence, it allowed people to live beyond their means. They were encouraged to take on debt as their house values seemed headed up forever, and the great rise in foreclosures and bankruptcies is the unfortunate result of the financialization of the economy. Also, those people who had retirement money in individual accounts or with pension systems and thought that they had become very wealthy, now found themselves with much less to rely upon.

MW: In the last couple of decades, consumer debt has skyrocketed, as you note, “doubling from 1975 to 2005, to 127 percent of disposable income.” (pg 60) Have we gone as far as we can without deleveraging and paying down debts? What happens to a credit-dependent economy when the consumer can no longer increase his/her debt-load? Is this just the beginning of a decades-long down-cycle?

Michael Yates: Certainly no entity—not a person, a family, a business, even a government— can take on rising levels of debt (relative to income) indefinitely. Sooner or later, the piper has to be paid. Working-class consumers took on large amounts of debt, to compensate in part for stagnating wages and incomes, and, it is important to note, to pay for health problems and other household traumas. This meant that the burden of the debt rose, since income wasn’t rising as fast as the debt, and also because the interest rates charged on credit cards and subprime mortgages were so high. We at Monthly Review have been decrying the rise of consumer debt for many years, and we said that the debt chickens would come home to roost sooner of later. I must say that I was surprised that debt could be broadened and deepened for so long. The ingenuity of creditors in extending loan periods and devising so many new forms of debt has to be admired for its audacity. Then, the ways in which these debts were packaged and sold so that more debt could be extended was truly breathtaking. Unfortunately, consumers ultimately couldn’t pay and all hell broke loose. Now, with so much unemployment, workers are truly strapped. They will not be borrowing so much or spending so much anytime soon. [One interesting recent development is that, as some households have defaulted on debts or simply stopped making payments, consumer spending has showed a bit of an upward tick!] So the question arises: what spending will fuel a sustained recovery? It won’t likely be consumer spending. Capital spending was stagnating to begin with and was the root cause of the crisis. There are no new “epoch-making” innovations on the horizon that would generate the amounts of investment that were brought forth by the automobile. U.S. exports seem a very unlikely demand support. That leaves the government. In a capitalist economy, especially one like the United States with its lack of a history of generally accepted public spending, it seems very unlikely that public spending will make up for shortfalls in aggregate demand. Already, there are widespread entreaties (and not just from the far right) urging the federal government to wind down in spending programs—well before, I might add, the economy has recovered. As we see it, the United States is, indeed, in for a long period of stagnation, a “down cycle” as you put it.

Fred Magdoff: This is one of the major constraints on the system. The economy is in a process that economists call “deleveraging,” which is just another way of referring to somehow getting rid of debt. Some are able to pay off what they owe, a few are able to renegotiate down some of their debt, many are losing their homes, and some are going bankrupt. Until this works its way out, and a lot of debt is shed one way or another, there will be a drag on the “consumer” portion of the purchases. This is particularly significant to the U.S. economy because it is so dependent on consumer purchases—in 2007, these absorbed approximately 70% of the goods and services produced.

MW: The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know is as lucid and compelling summary of the financial crisis as any I have read. In the closing chapter you state that capitalism is undergoing a “crisis of legitimacy” and that “the system can never deliver what is needed for us to realize our capacities and enjoy our lives… That “instead of private gain” the purpose of society and the economy is “to serve the needs of people, by providing the necessities of life for all, without promoting excessive consumption (consumerism) while protecting earth’s life support systems.”

All of the things that which kept capitalism in check–progressive taxation, crucial regulations, and the power of unions–have either been reversed, repealed or greatly eroded. More and more people are beginning to see the greed which governs the system, and it scares them. But is the country really ready for structural change or will the vision of an economy which “serves the needs of its people” be dismissed as “pie-in-the-sky” Utopianism?

Michael Yates: Well, first thank you Mike for the kind words. They are much appreciated. Typically, the best we have been able to hope for from the public in the United States has been an amorphous populism; people are willing to say that the system is corrupt and that it is biased in favor of the rich. But proposals for change, much less a radical transformation of the economic system, are rare commodities. I think things would be different, however, if we had a real labor movement, one that was rooted in communities, broad in its composition, and not afraid to have principles and stand by them come hell or high water. This should be the lesson that progressives learned from the right-wing. The talking heads of Fox may seem insane to us, but they and their intellectual gurus almost never deviate from the set of reactionary principles with which they began to transform the “common sense” of the nation. We suggest at the end of our book that we ought to ask ourselves if a return to the pre-economic crisis status quo is what we want. In the best of times, there is plenty of unutilized labor, a degraded environment, poverty, dead-end jobs, and much more that is not so desirable. So we chose a number of alternative outcomes to what we have now that we think have mass appeal, from universal healthcare to basic food guarantees. However, as you say, these might well, and I think will cause people to react with a pie-in-the-sky indifference. What might make working men and women stand up and take notice would be for these goals to have a mass-based advocate, one that would make these goals matters of rigid principle and begin to fight for them through mass actions. We might think that the right-wing ideologues we see on television are insane. Yet, come hell or high water, they stick to their guns. Their political and economic adherents have wielded tremendous power for a long period of time, and even today when they seem to be losing their grip on the national “common sense,” they can still mobilize the faithful. The left needs to take a lesson from this. More particularly, the labor movement must take a firm and rigid stand on issues like national health care, food security, environmental degradation, full employment, good and cheap housing, U.S. war-making and imperialis, racism, and a host of others. Then it must educate members rigorously and constantly about such principles. Most importantly, it must begin to actively fight to achieve them, activating its millions of members and allies, wherever it can find them. It is through action, bold and unafraid, that people’s minds will get changed and a new “common sense” developed.

Having said this, I think it is clear that the labor movement, as currently constituted, is not up to the tasks at hand. Too many unions are moribund, stuck in the failed labor-management cooperation mind set of the past and run by people too old and infirm to do much of anything. So, not only will we have to have a worker-led opposition to the status quo, fighting to change it radically, but this opposition will have to be built on a new basis. There are some hopeful signs, such as the development of community-based worker centers, mainly in immigrant communities. These may be models for the labor movement of the future.

Fred Magdoff: Just getting what should be the most reasonable reforms through Congress is a major effort, which usually fails or is corrupted in the process. Look what’s happening with health care “reform.” Even if a “public option” is finally part of the bill, it will be a bill that helps some people, but is primarily a boon to the health care industry, which will get a lot of new revenue. It’s not a bill designed with the single purpose in mind: how can we supply medical care for everyone at reasonable cost. Rather it’s a bill designed with significant input from the for-profit sector that will end up supplying them with extra profits. It is clear that government-run systems (and there are a variety of ways to do this) are far cheaper and more efficient and can actually cover everyone. SO, it seems as though piecemeal reform is a) very difficult to obtain and b) can be reversed as the power of the wealthy increases. A system is needed that can break the power of the wealthy and create a real political and economic democracy in order to be able to meet the basic needs for all the people.

An October 21 FBI press release announced Tariq (mispelled Tarek) Mehanna as its most recent target saying:

“A Sudbury, Mass. man was charged today in federal court with conspiracy to provide support to terrorists.”

The FBI alleged that from “about 2001 and continuing until (about) May 2008, Mehanna conspired with Ahmad Abousamra and others to provide material support and resources for use in carrying out a conspiracy to kill, kidnap, main or injure persons or damage property in a foreign country and extraterritorial homicide of a US national.”

With no substantiating evidence, “Mehanna and coconspirators (were accused of having) discussed their desire to participate in violent jihad against American interests and that they would talk about fighting jihad and their desire to die on the battlefield. (They also) attempted to radicalize others and inspire each other by, among other things, watching and distributing jihadi videos. (In addition), Mehanna and two of his associates traveled to the Middle East in February 2004, seeking military-type training at a terrorist training camp (to) prepare them for armed jihad….including (against) US and allied forces in Iraq… (One) of Mehanna’s co-conspirators made two similar trips to Pakistan in 2002.”

…Mehanna and the coconspirators had multiple conversations about obtaining automatic weapons (from a Mr. Maldonado, now serving a 10-year sentence for training with Al Queda in Somalia) and randomly shooting people in a shopping mall, and that the conversations went so far as to discuss the logistics of a mall attack, including coordination, weapons needed and the possibility of attacking emergency responders.

Yet no attack occurred. None ever was likely planned, but according to the FBI, it was because no automatic weapons could be obtained even though legal semi-automatic ones are freely sold and illegal automatic ones easily gotten.

The web site eastcoastfirearms.com lists for sale numerous ones, including AK-47 (Kalashnikov) assault rifles, AR-15/M16 type rifles, Uzi assault weapons, LWRC M6A2s called the most modern carbine rifle in the world, and various others with considerable firepower.

“Mehanna was previously indicted in January 2009 for making false statements to members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force of the FBI in connection with a terrorism investigation. If convicted on the material support charge, (he) faces up to 15 years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release and a $250,000 fine.”

Federal Judge Leo Sorokin ordered Mehanna held without bail pending his next court hearing on October 30. After his ruling, his attorney, JW Carney, Jr. said:

This is the type of case that challenges our commitment and faith in the United States Constitution. Our country is respected around the world because we presume people are innocent, and we require the government to prove its allegations in open court at trial.

Mr. Carney will soon discover how prosecutors use secret evidence, paid informants, and will go to any lengths to intimidate juries to convict, regardless of a defendant’s guilt or innocence, especially targeted Muslims charged with intent to commit or provide material support for terrorism.

According to the Bureau, Mehanna and his “coconspirators” used code words like “peanut and jelly” to mean fighting in Somalia and “culinary school” for terrorist camps, but perhaps they said precisely what they meant, and what proof suggests otherwise.

The FBI also claimed when they weren’t able to join terror groups in Iraq, Yemen and Pakistan, the 2002 Washington-area sniper shootings inspired them to attack shopping malls instead as well as two (unnamed) former executive branch members.

Mehanna is a graduate of the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy where his father, Ahmed, is a professor. They reside in Sudbury, MA, an affluent Boston suburb.

Neighbors expressed shock by the news. Chafic Maalouf called Mehanna “very sweet (and) soft-spoken. He seemed so harmless. He has a beard and a dark complexion, so to the average American he fits the terrorist profile. But if you look in his eyes, he seemed to be a very genuine, kind, loving person,” not a jihadist.

Paul McManus called him “everyday normal. When he was out walking, he was friendly (and) neighborly.” Another supporter said the FBI is “painting the wrong picture of the Muslim community” by targeting one of its up and coming members. Still others cited his work with youths as a teacher at the Islamic Center of Boston in Wayland, MA.

Abdul Cader Asmal, the Center’s former president, said he gave lectures at Friday services in Worchester, MA and translated poetic Arabic scriptures into English. Over time, he became dedicated to his beliefs as many people of all faiths do who plan no terrorist acts.

Ahmad AlFarsi defended Mehanna in a 2008 article following his previous arrest that’s pertinent to his current charges. At first, he hesitated “so as not to expose (his) privacy,” then felt he had to support his friend “since the media has already made his case and name public” and practically convicted him in the court of public opinion.

AlFarsi called him “one of the most gracious, kind, caring, thoughtful, and respectable people I have ever known… I have seen him go above above and beyond what most others would do to help others in need. Those who know him personally know exactly what I am talking about. I am sure any of his peers, Muslim or non-Muslim, would testify to his excellent character.”

He’s also been “very involved in the Muslim community. I remember many times that he would be giving halaqaat (Islamic lectures) in the local masjid (Muslim place of worship) on an Islamic text he was studying. And he helped many many other Muslims in the community come to the straight path… I’d also like to emphasize that he does not and never has supported nor been involved with terrorism, in any way whatsoever.”

Consider “the implications of this incident: we have another (Muslim man, an American citizen) with no previous criminal record of any kind, being held without bail (for now) in his own country….Such a tactic serves only to smear Muslims, and brings pain and suffering to him, his family, and his future,” and leaves all Muslims “fearful, marginalized, and unable to trust the authorities.”

The FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) October 20 Affidavit

JTTF Special Agent Heidi L. Williams assisted in the investigation of Mehanna, Ahmad Abousamra, and others, and presented alleged evidence to establish probable cause, but said “classified national security information” would remain secret, unavailable to the defense, and therefore beyond its capability to disprove.

Williams claimed Mehanna’s “Computer and its contents constitute evidence of the commission of a criminal offense, contraband, fruits of crime and things otherwise criminally possessed as well as property designed and intended for use, and that has been used, as a means of committing… criminal offense(s under US law).”

She also said “information set forth herein comes from two cooperating witnesses (’CW1′ and ‘CW2′ — aka commonly used FBI informants to entrap). Both CWs provided information that was based on personal knowledge, including actions and statements by MEHANNA and ABOUSAMRA.” Their trial testimony will show “corroborative evidence in the form of consensually recorded conversations” with defendants and others. “Further evidence is provided by Daniel Maldonado, who was a friend of MEHANNA and ABOUSAMRA, and is currently serving a 10 year prison sentence for Receiving Military-type Training from a Foreign Terrorist Organization (to wit: Al Qa’ ida….).”

“Additional information was obtained from a review of records of governmental agencies, such as Customs and Border Protection (”CBP”) and Department of State, Passport Office, as well as records of private entities, such as banks, airlines, telephone companies and internet service providers, and interviews of friends, relatives and acquaintances (of defendants).”

Williams cited more evidence from:

• Mehanna’s bedroom;
• a computer hard drive;
• “false information” he provided the JTTF with regard to his 2004 Yemen trip and knowledge of “Maldonado’s circumstances at the time of the interview;”
• recorded conversations in which “Mehanna admitted to other individuals that he lied to the FBI” regarding Maldonado;
• the November 2008 charge of lying about Maldonado during JTTF interrogations;
• the December 2006 charge that Abousamra lied during JTTF interrogations in claiming his 2004 Yemen trip was to study Arabic and Islam;
• Williams’ assertion that both defendants went to Yemen in 2004 “to learn how to conduct, and to subsequently engage in, jihad;” to Pakistan twice in 2002 for the same purpose;
• that defendants “continued in their efforts to train for jihad (and) received information and assistance from an individual (referred to) as Individual A, about who to see and where to go to find terrorist training camps in Yemen;”
• in February 2004, Abousamra also entered Iraq, stayed for about “15 days” and two months later went to Syria and Jordan before returning to the US in August 2004; he subsequently visited Syria “multiple times;” he “made fictitious and fraudulent statements to the FBI” that he went to Jordan to “look for colleges,” to Iraq “to look for a job” and to Syria “to visit his wife.”

The lengthy 55-page affidavit, plus attachments, also claimed:

• CW 2 was a coconspirator;
• Abousamra had “extremist views by citing Islamic teachings;”
• “the three men engaged in serious conversations about jihad;”
• they discussed “going to terrorist training camps in Pakistan (and) conducted logistical research on the internet pertaining to terrorist training camp locations and how to travel there, but no concrete plans materialized;” and
• extensive further allegations that defendants sought but never received terrorist training; that they wished to engage in jihad, but never did; and they subsequently “discussed logistics of a mall attack, including the types of weapons needed, the number of people who would be involved, and how to coordinate the attack from different entrances (but) Because of the logistical problems of executing the operation (and their inability to obtain the type weapons they wanted), the plan was abandoned.”

From all this, an observer might conclude there was no plan, no weapons, and no crime in what appears to be clear entrapment using a paid informant, a co-conspirator CW 2, offering testimony in return for leniency, and Maldonado (imprisoned for 10 years) promised it as well for his cooperation. Nonetheless, under US conspiracy law, if prosecutors can convince juries that defendants words implied actions they can get convictions, especially when they cite terrorism and the urgency to prevent it at all costs, even if innocent victims are imprisoned for offenses they never committed of planned.

Mehanna Friends, Supporters, and Family Express Doubts about the Charges

With no previous criminal record, his friends and family call him a maturing Muslim community leader, a passionate writer, and a young man wanting a career in Saudi Arabia as a pharmacist, not a jihadist, even though he supports the right of oppressed peoples to resist as international law allows. In the Kingdom, he was promised good pay, generous benefits, and free trips home. He was boarding a plane in Boston en route when he was arrested.

In a summer 2009 interview with the Boston Globe and subsequent statements through his lawyer, he denied FBI allegations and accused federal investigators of targeting him with bogus charges because they wanted him as a government informant, pressured him to accede, but he refused and wouldn’t cooperate. That made him suspect, an enemy, and got him targeted.

The Dominant Media’s Jihad against Muslims

Whenever Muslims are charged, the dominant media provides support without ever questioning the legitimacy of accusations. As a result, innocent victims are vilified. They’re presumed guilty unless proved innocent. Fear is instilled in the public, while law enforcement officials are portrayed as public defenders, working to keep us safe from bad guys. Below are some samples of media bias:

– The New York Times headlined, “Mass. Man Arrested in Terrorism Case….The authorities said he had conspired to attack civilians at a shopping mall, American soldiers abroad and two members of the executive branch of the federal government.”

* AP called Mehanna “an Incompetent Wannabe” and practically accused him of “plotting to shoot up a mall, kill US troops fighting overseas, and assassinate US officials” here at home;

* Fox News highlighted the alleged plot, called Mehanna “Defiant in Court,” and said he was only foiled by being “unable to get into terror camps for training and failed to get access to automatic weapons;”

* the Wall Street Journal headlined the “Plots to Shoot Up Mall, Kill Federal Officials” by a man “out on bail (from an earlier unsubstantiated charge and) awaiting trial;”

* the Washington Post reported about the: “Mass. man arrested on terror charges” (for) conspiring to support terrorists by seeking training from Islamic extremist fighters overseas….”

* Time magazine offered a “two-minute bio” about an “Alleged US Terrorist….plann(ing) to carry out a ‘violent jihad’ by killing US politicians, (and) attack(ing) US shopping malls;”

* the Christian Science Monitor headlined how the “FBI traced Tarek Mehanna in his quest to become a jihadi” and practically accused him of “try(ing) to become a terrorist for eight years following the 9/11 attacks….;” and

* Jihad Watch, an Islamaphobic web site, called Mehanna “a Misunderstander of Islam,” then accused him of “plotting ‘violent jihad.’ ”

Nowhere do major media or hate group reports suggest possible bogus charges, ulterior motives behind them, innocent people being targeted, secret evidence withheld to compromise a proper defense, intimidation of juries, or that everyone is presumed innocent unless proved guilty in fair and open proceedings with defendants having competent counsel.

According to muslimmatters.org after Mehanna’s 2008 arrest, the FBI was “Desperate for Results (so they) Arrest(ed a) US Citizen on Two-Year-Old (unsubstantiated) Charges” and got their usual scare headlines for support.

These comments followed his October 21 arrest:

All of us here at MM believe, based on the facts that we know, that Tareq is innocent of the crimes that he has been accused of… MM is often on the front lines against disinformation about Islam, and actively seeks to counter the radicalization of Muslims.

MM’s goal “is to educate readers about the fallacies and dangers of all types of extremism by promoting Orthodox Islam….we believe that Islamophobes are indirectly aiding and abetting terrorists’ recruiting efforts by fitting into their agenda and supporting their stereotypes.”

Many Muslims were shocked about the news on Mehanna. “It was generally thought (his 2008 charges were bogus) and that (he) had been falsely accused. After all, (post-9/11), the civil liberties of the Muslim American community had been slowly withered away by the Patriot Act, warrantless wiretapping, the denial of the basic American right of habeas corpus, and unsavory tactics that targeted (Muslims) in general… we at MM” know his “reputation as a family man and a peaceful citizen” and presume he’s innocent “unless proven otherwise…. (We) remain highly skeptical that he was actually a ‘terrorist in disguise.’”

A Final Comment

More than any other ethnic-religious group, Western discourse has long portrayed Muslim/Arabs stereotypically as culturally inferior, dirty, lecherous, untrustworthy, religiously fanatical, and violent.

According to Jack Shaheen’s book, Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People, defaming them has been fair game throughout decades of cinematic history (from silent films to today’s blockbusters) as a way to foster prejudicial attitudes and reinforce notions of Western values, high-mindedness, and moral superiority.

Worse still are slanderous media characterizations of dangerous gun-toting terrorists who must rounded up and put away, never mind the rule of law, right or wrong, or whether those accused are guilty or innocent.

It’s no surprise why it’s dangerous to be Muslim in America at a time when we’re all as vulnerable as Tariq Mehanna.

I have heard Baldwin’s reasoning before in both my personal political conversations and even in other public forums. For example, President Obama made “ending our addiction to foreign oil” a primary issue in his campaign. The argument – which is rarely made specifically – basically follows that energy independence would end U.S. commerce in the Middle East, and if the U.S. no longer buys Arab oil, then the U.S. no longer has any interest in the Middle East. In essence – and this is the part Baldwin and others didn’t include – we could leave the Arabs to their own devices, their own problems, their own religious extremism, their own violent tendencies. And eventually they won’t have any reason to attack us again.

Clearly, this is myopic, reductive reasoning that fails to consider the complexities of global economics or the extent of our political involvement in the Middle East. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that we get some magic mineral or our scientists are able to perfect safe, reliable nuclear fusion, effectively ending our oil consumption. Would Obama immediately remove all our soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan? Not in the face of conservative commentators who still maintain that we have to fight “them over there” so we don’t have to fight them here. The more serious argument against immediate troop withdrawal suggests that things are too unstable for U.S. troops to leave. This argument seems to suggest that we are the glue holding Afghanistan together.

Most importantly, I doubt our reliance on oil prevents Obama from calling up Benjamin Netanyahu and simply saying, “Israel is officially on its own, buddy.” In fact, the Middle Eastern nations’ single greatest complaint about U.S. foreign policy is our consistent, uncritical support of Israel. And this support is increasing, or at least under pressure to increase. Mitt Romney, in what is doubtlessly a preparation for a 2012 run at the White House, spoke at the AIPAC (“America’s Pro Israel Lobby” according to its website) summit on October 19.¹ Before stating that Iran, a country of over 65 million people, is “unalloyed evil,” (para. 30), Romney wondered at “how little we ask of the Arab world” (para. 14) and proclaimed his personal and political affection for Israel. What is more, President Obama’s government has voted against endorsing the Goldstone Report, a U.N. investigation accusing both Israel and Hamas of war crimes and crimes against humanity during the 2008 war in Gaza. From both sides of the political spectrum, Israel enjoys remarkable latitude and political support.

But Baldwin’s statement is indicative of an even larger discursive problem. As a nation, we’ve failed to put our uncritical support for Israel up for question. Our national conversation has paid more attention to the Balloon Boy. Baldwin can present the argument that the U.S. is only tied to Middle East through oil because on the Sunday morning talk shows, the Goldstone Report got no play. As a nation, we don’t talk about whether or not we should support Israel, so it is understandable that Baldwin would elide this when he speaks of U.S.-Middle East relations.

What troubles me most is this: a focus only on oil also ignores the vast cultural advantages the U.S. has gained from Arab countries. The food, music, literature, architecture – and if none of those impress you, how about numbers? Yes, we got our numbers from Arabs! But in our discourse, isn’t it more than a little stereotypical that the only thing we can remember is oil? Doesn’t this deploy a repeating image in our cultural lexicon: the Arab gas station attendant? Is this to what our foreign policy reduces this vast region – the so-called cradle of civilization? My contention is that anti-Arab racism pervades our political discussion about the Middle East if we choose to restrict that conversation to oil and terrorism. And Baldwin’s idea – that if we free ourselves of our “addiction to foreign oil,” then the world will be a better place – underhandedly suggests that the ultimate goal for Middle East peace is to leave “them” alone, separate “them” from “us.” After all, so goes this argument, they are not fit for modernity. Essentially, this argument forces the Middle East endgame to be more about isolation than unity and more about fearing the radical differences between our cultures than the glaring sameness of our humanity. It seems to me that the hope of a lasting Middle East peace rests upon a common commitment to avoiding stereotypes and, possibly most of all, to treating Arab interests with respect and legitimacy.

About two weeks ago, I saw a bumper sticker that said, “Kick their ass. Take their gas.” After a brief surge of anger, during which I wanted to chase down the car and aggressively invite the driver for a cup of coffee and a picture show of Palestinian refugee camps, I comforted myself with one small hope. I hoped that the driver’s view was the minority. Sadly, I can’t say that I was right.

1. Romney, Mitt. “Address by Mitt Romney at AIPAC National Summit.” Real Clear Politics. 19 October 2009. 20 October 2009.

On January 16, 2007, 10 year old Abir Aramin was walking home from school with her sister and two friends, but instead of having milk and cookies that afternoon; she was shot in the head with a rubber bullet by the Israeli Border Police and after three days on life support Abir’s struggle ended but not the struggle for justice her parents have been seeking ever since.

In 2007, I reported that Avichay Sharon, of Combatants for Peace stated, “Over the past 2 years, the Israeli Border Police and IDF forces have been creating provocations near the school district of Anata [which] has become a part of the daily routine for the children. Ever since construction started on the separation barrier surrounding Anata, the jeeps have been roaming the streets especially near the schools and shooting grenades and tear gas along with rubber bullets.

“Many children have been injured in the past by these brutal actions of the soldiers and on January 16th it became deadly. As in many other cases the police replied that the soldiers were shooting in response to stones thrown at them by children. Even though all the evidence and witnesses stated that no stones were thrown that day” the prosecution dismissed the Aramin family’s case, claiming lack of evidence.

Bassam Aramin, Abir’s father and co-founder of Combatants for Peace said, “I’m not going to lose my common sense, my direction, only because I’ve lost my heart, my child. I will do all I can to protect her friends, both Palestinian and Israeli. They are all our children.”

When Bassam Aramin was 17 he was sentenced to 7 years in an Israeli prison for belonging to the then-outlawed Fatah movement. Although he had been beaten by soldiers in prison, he decided that he would not become a prisoner of hatred.

The “Combatants for Peace” are Palestinians and Israelis, who had all been involved in perpetuating the cycle of violence; Israelis as soldiers in the Israeli army (IDF) and Palestinians as part of the violent struggle for Palestinian freedom. All decided to put down their guns and work together in the good fight for peace through nonviolent actions and by raising voices of conscience as they seek to create political pressure on both Governments to end the violence and end the military occupation of Palestine.

Elhanan wryly reported that Abir’s parents “live under a cruel occupation and they have experienced all it has to offer: exile, imprisonment and the killing of their small daughter Abir by a rubber bullet that was allegedly fired from the rifle of a Border Guard soldier who was sitting in an armoured jeep and thrust the barrel of his rifle through the opening that was allegedly designed for that purpose and allegedly aimed and fired at the head of the girl who was standing beside her sister at a kiosk, allegedly buying candy during the break between the first class and the second.

The projectile was removed from under the girl’s body and transferred to the authorities. The eyewitnesses, as well as the Border Guard soldiers, testified that there was no alleged danger to their lives and that the shooting was done – if it was done – in contravention of instructions. Two pathologists testified that it was probable that the fracture in Abir’s little skull could allegedly have been caused by a rubber bullet. The attending physician at the Hadassah hospital said that it was not a live bullet. The video of the reconstruction of the incident was not given to the defence counsel or to the court, because the soldiers who allegedly carried out the shooting, that is, who thrust the barrel of the rifle through the opening that had been made especially for that purpose, aimed and fired at the head of the girl Abir, were featured in the recording.

Counsel for the State, stammering, unprepared and unkempt, stood like a platoon commander in charge of new recruits with her back to the public and refuted the allegations: So they found a projectile. So what? Who knows how long it had been lying there? So people gave testimony, so what? They (those Arabs) can say anything, does that make it testimony? So nobody was throwing stones at that spot, so what? On a nearby street stones were thrown. If you were in my place, she laughingly says to Michael Sfard, Aramin’s attorney you would have made morsels of them by now.

Judge Beinish reminds Sfard – twice – that there have been such incidents in the past and that soldiers have rarely been put on trial or even indicted, so it would be best to just forget it… But Salwa and Bassam Aramin have no choice but to seek justice in an Israeli court. They demand that the truth come to light in a court of the occupiers – of the killers.

I nearly shouted for the drowsy judges – Beinish, Arbel, Frocaccia – to find a spark of humanity, of motherly feelings, within themselves and to look into the eyes of Salwa, who never stopped crying, and at Bassam’s ashen face, and to say: the High Court of Justice sympathizes with you over the death of little Abir. They didn’t.

Elhanan also noted that Jean-François Lyotard wrote that the perfect crime is not only the killing but also the suppression of the testimony and the silencing of the voices of the victims. And the greatest injustice is to compel the victims to seek justice in the court of their tormentors.

In March of 2006, I visited Anata refugee camp and have been tormented by my memories ever since.

Israel erected their thirty foot high concrete apartheid Wall at the boys high school where 780 Palestinian adolescents, share a slab of cement about the square footage of a basket ball court; their only ‘playground’.

A resident refugee informed me that on a daily basis, “The Israeli Occupation Forces show up when the children gather in the morning or after classes. They throw percussion bombs or gas bombs into the school nearly every day! The world is sleeping; the world is hibernating and is allowing this misery to continue.”

A moment later, a teenage boy approached me as I was taking photos and asked me my name and where I was from. I cringed admitting I was American, for “financed with U.S. aid at a cost of $1.5 million per mile, the Israeli wall prevents residents from receiving health care and emergency medical services. In other areas, the barrier separates farmers from their olive groves which have been their families’ sole livelihood for generations.”¹

On July 9, 2004, the International Court of Justice/ICJ, ruled 14-1 that The Wall was illegal and it must come down and also that compensation should be paid to all who had been affected.

The ICJ Judges also decided 13-2 that signatories to the Geneva Convention were obliged to enforce “compliance by Israel with international humanitarian law” and the U.N. General Assembly also passed a resolution 150-6 supporting the ICJ’s call to dismantle the wall.”²

Less than five minutes by car from Anata, one can enter into the Orwellian Disney Land of lush green grounds called the Pizgat Ze’ev settlement.

All the settlements/colonies in the West Bank are illegal under international law.

I was sick at heart as I traveled through the colony and counted three playgrounds and a swimming pool.

I wondered how many USA tax dollars helped to build them, and outraged over the injustices of Walls and military occupation that American money provides against the indigenous people of that land.

Within fifteen minutes after leaving Anata, as I stood next to a playground in Pizgat Ze’ev, a barrage of gunshots issued from the refugee camp and my guide informed me that the Israeli soldiers were showering the refugees with gun fire and terror- another normal daily occurrence for them.

I lost it and sobbed uncontrollably, and imagined the Magdalena when she could not find her Lord.

And then I thought how Jesus cried buckets of tears over Jerusalem when he “saw the city, he wept over it and said, ‘If you had only known what would bring you peace but it is hidden from your eyes.’” — Luke 19:42

Lady Justice, the Roman Goddess of Justice, an allegorical personification of the moral force in judicial systems, is depicted wearing a blindfold to indicate that justice should be meted out objectively, not based in favor of- or against- ethnicity, power, or weakness, but on blind impartiality.

Perhaps it is a case of cold hearts in 21st century Jerusalem that has rendered the Justices of the Israeli High Court with eyes blind to their injustices.

1. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Jan/Feb. 2007.
2. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July 2009.

According to a federal lawsuit (Morrow v Tenaha) filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, there was “no legal justification” for what happened next. Morrow was stopped by Tenaha Deputy Marshall Barry Washington and asked to step out of his car. Deputy Washington then searched Morrow’s car.

Then Deputy Washington was joined at the scene by Shelby County Precinct Four Constable Randy Whatley who searched the car with a dog.

Following two searches of his car, Morrow was asked by Deputy Washington if he had any money, and he said yes, he was carrying about $3,900 in his wallet. Deputy Washington promptly seized $3,969 from Morrow, confiscated his two cell phones, and arrested him for “money laundering.”

“Washington had no reason to believe Plaintiff Morrow was guilty of money laundering,” says the federal lawsuit.

“Defendants Washington and Russell told Plaintiff Morrow they would hold him prisoner and prosecute him for money laundering unless he would agree to forfeit the $3969. Under this duress and these threats, Defendants Washington and Russell coerced Plaintiff Morrow to execute documents memorializing the forfeiture, and released him, and warned him to not hire a lawyer or try to get his money back.” The “money laundering” charges were subsequently dismissed.

Morrow is a black African American and the lead plaintiff in a case involving eight motorists who claim they were stopped and stripped of their cash for no other provocation than driving or riding through Tenaha while black. The cars they all drove were either rented or displayed out-of-state license plates.

On August 13, 2007, Deputy Washington lifted $50,291.00 from two black African Americans from Washington D.C. and Maryland who were traveling through Texas together.

“Washington threatened Plaintiffs with charges of money laundering and lengthy sentences if they would not execute documents allowing the seizure or if they otherwise contested the seizure,” says the lawsuit. “Washington did not charge Plaintiffs with any criminal offense, nor did he have legal justification to do so.”

On June 11, 2008, Deputy Washington confiscated $13,000 from a black African American from Wisconsin.

“Washington threatened to bring money laundering charges against Plaintiff, and to prosecute him on those charges, if he did not execute documents permitting Defendant Washington’s seizure and forfeiture of the money,” says the lawsuit. “Under this coercion, Plaintiff signed the documents.”

On April 18, 2007, Deputy Washington stopped and detained another pair of black African American motorists, Linda Dorman and Marvin Pearson, both from Ohio. While under detention they were questioned by Shelby County District Attorney Investigator Danny Green. He asked them if they had any money. According to court documents Dorman and Pearson admitted to having $4,500, but after Green confiscated the cash under the usual coercive threats, he handed them a receipt for only $4,000. No charges against Dorman or Pearson were ever filed.

Jennifer Boatwright is a white woman from Texas, but on April 26, 2007 she was driving down Highway 59 near Tenaha with Ronald Henderson, a black African American. They were stopped and detained by Deputy Washington, then questioned by Washington and D.A. Investigator Green.

“Green threatened to bring money laundering charges against Plaintiffs Boatwright and Henderson and to take their children and put them in foster care if Plaintiffs would not sign papers prepared by Defendant Green to authorize the seizure,” says the lawsuit. “Under coercion, Plaintiffs Boatwright and Henderson complied.” They handed over $6,000 in cash. No charges were ever filed against them.

“Now, under Texas law, if you are pulled over and accused of a real crime, police are permitted to take money and other valuables that you might have used in your crime, or received from your crime,” explains CNN correspondent Gary Tuchman in a May, 2009 blog post at AC360.

As Tuchman explains, the forfeiture law is intended to take bad money and put it to good use, but after an extensive public information request, the CNN team discovered that District Attorney Lynda K. Russell has collected an estimated $3 million in forfeiture funds to purchase such things as $195 for Tootsie Pops, Dum Dums, and Dubble Bubble that she contributed to a poultry festival, $524 for a popcorn machine and popcorn, $400 for barbecue catering, and at least two checks totaling $6,000 to a local Baptist church.

“But this one, this check, really stands out,” reports Tuchman in an archived transcript of the story. “This is the check the DA wrote for $10,000 and paid directly to police officer Barry Washington for what are described as investigative costs.”

With camera rolling, Tuchman asks Russell and Washington for comments, but they both refuse on account of pending litigation. In federal court documents the defendants deny the charges, claim to have no knowledge of alleged facts, claim immunity as officials, and ask that the case be dismissed.

Republican D.A. Russell was elected by 53 percent of the vote against a Democrat opponent in 2000, according to official numbers posted by the Texas Secretary of State. In 2004, she increased her general election share to 59 percent against her predecessor, Democrat Karen S. Price, who tried to stage a comeback after a failed effort to get elected in 2000 as a Republican District Judge. In 2008, D.A. Russell ran unopposed. No one that year could have made a campaign issue of the federal suit that was filed after the Spring primary but before the Fall general election.

During the summer of 2009, lawyers battled over discovery motions. Plaintiffs are trying to certify a class action lawsuit and therefore want volumes of video and documentation well beyond the eight named cases. On August 20, Federal District Judge T. John Ward largely granted ACLU requests for more materials and clarified the legal path to possible class action certification.

On the defense side, attorneys argued that they should be allowed to discover “travel itineraries, calendars, journals, or other documents reflecting schedule and/or any travel; all credit card bills/receipts; all receipts for hotel, gas, meals, rental cars; and photographs from any trips and of any items seized.” Judge Ward agreed, but only if the records were “readily available.”

Lawyers for the police and D.A.’s office also wanted plaintiffs to turn over bank records, income tax returns, and employment records; in an apparent attempt to revisit the “money laundering” charges that were never filed in the first place. It was a scary request supported by scary argumentation:

“In other words,” argued lawyers for the Shelby County law enforcement establishment in their federal filings, “even if the initial traffic stop lacked probable cause, the forfeiture action could proceed and the State could still meet its civil case burden of proof by a preponderance of the evidence and the property could still be forfeited.”

The authority the cops were seeking was chilling. They could stop people for no reason, take their cash, spend it, meanwhile filing no charges of wrongdoing. All the while, the authorities of East Texas or wherever could count on a federal court order that would allow them to go after the banking, tax, and employment records of their innocent victims if they tried to get their money back. Judge Ward denied those parts of discovery.

The discovery motions also revealed that collection accounts were not always well kept. One front-line collector argued that he kept bulk numbers only and could not provide evidence of how much money was taken on any single occasion. To get your money back from these actors, they may demand that you prove it’s not contraband and then prove how much they took.

But these East Texas law enforcers are not finished grasping at bizarre license to ply their trade as the cash cops of Highway 59. D.A. Russell now seeks to use the forfeiture funds to pay for her defense. In early October, the ACLU filed a brief with the Texas Attorney General’s Office to prevent the forfeiture funds from being spent to defend alleged abuse of forfeiture powers.

“Even if it were determined that, under other circumstances, the District Attorney should be permitted to use forfeited assets to pay for legal representation, such an action in this case should be prohibited because it would give the appearance of impropriety,” argues the ACLU brief.

“The Plaintiffs claim the funds were taken illegally. To permit the District Attorney to use them would suggest that law-breakers may profit from ill-gotten gains, the very problem that the asset forfeiture law was created to prevent.”

Cash is a lucrative temptation. Empowering officials to take cash money from passing motorists and give it to attorneys who can help them keep it is a plain recipe for placing law enforcement powers in the hands of highway forfeiture gangs.

Three Israel-related events this year have stayed in the headlines, reflecting the importance of Israel in Canadian political and cultural life.

First, Canadian Ambassador to Israel Jon Allen was recently honoured at Canada Park — built on occupied Palestinian land in violation of international law — as one of hundreds of donors who helped establish the park on the ruins of three Palestinian villages. Just north of Jerusalem, it was founded in the early 1970s following Israel’s occupation of the West Bank in the 1967 war. It is hugely popular for walks and picnics with the Israeli public, who are by and large unaware that they are in Palestinian territory that is officially a closed military zone. Former Israeli parliamentarian Uri Avnery has described the park’s creation as an act of complicity in “ethnic cleansing” and Canada’s involvement as “cover to a war crime”. About 5,000 Palestinians were expelled from the area during the war. A plaque bearing Allen’s name is attached to a stone wall constructed from the rubble of Palestinian homes razed by the Israeli army. The Jewish National Fund, treated as a charity for tax purposes, establishes and manages such parks on behalf of Jewish people worldwide. Canada Park is believed to be the only example, outside East Jerusalem, of the JNF becoming directly involved in managing land in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Then there is the wildly popular exhibition, “Dead Sea Scrolls: Words that Changed the World,” at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), a joint project with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), funded by the Toronto Tanenbaum family dynasty who coincidentally were instrumental in the creation of Canada Park. This exhibition provided a fitting gala premier for the museum’s ultra-modern wing designed by Israeli-American Daniel Libeskind. Libeskind, whose parents were Polish Holocaust survivors, also designed the Berlin Jewish Museum, the Felix Nussbaum Museum in Osnabruck, Germany, and the Danish Jewish Museum in Copenhagen. The Dead Sea Scrolls, regarded as one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the 20th century and including what is purported to be the oldest known version of the Old Testament (150BC-70CE), were found by a Bedouin shepherd in caves near Qumran, near the Dead Sea, and later by the Palestine Archaeological Museum (also known as the Rockefeller Museum) in a joint expedition with the Department of Antiquities of Jordan and the Ecole Biblique Française between 1947-1956. The Scrolls were displayed at the Palestine Archaeological Museum in East Jerusalem until 1967, when they were seized and relocated to the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum in West Jerusalem. Since 1967, additional (illegal) excavations and findings by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) took place in Qumran and the surrounding area, and artefacts continue to be (illegally) appropriated by Israel, under the auspices of the IAA.

Under international law and in accordance with Canada’s and Israel’s obligations as signatories to the 1954 UNESCO protocol for the “Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict”, Israel is not entitled to these artefacts. The repatriation of the Scrolls and millions of other artefacts to Palestine remains a key issue for those seeking peace and justice in the Middle East. In 2005, Canada signed other UNESCO conventions and protocols specifically aimed at preventing the removal and the exhibition of illegally removed artefacts from occupied territories, and adopted domestic Canadian legislation — the Cultural Property Export and Import Act — which makes it a criminal offense to import cultural property in violation of the conventions. The ROM, for its own part, is a member of the Canadian Museums Association whose Ethics Guidelines states that “museums must guard against any direct or indirect participation in the illicit traffic in cultural and natural objects that are: stolen, illegally imported or exported from another state, including those that are occupied or war-stricken.” The 1954 Convention clearly requires Canada to “take into custody cultural property imported into its territory either directly or indirectly from any occupied territory” and “return, at the close of hostilities, to the competent authorities of the territory previously occupied, cultural property which is in its territory.”

Israel not only continues to illegally excavate in occupied Palestinian territory but dismisses international law altogether (despite its UNESCO pledges), using archeology and discoveries such as the Dead Sea Scrolls to reinforce the Zionist national narrative and the colonial project upon which the state was founded. Supposedly a science removed from political, religious, or ideological bias, archeology under the IAA is the very antithesis of this, being rooted in Biblical mythology. Artefacts like the Scrolls are, according to Amos Elon, “almost titles of real estate, like deeds of possession to a contested country”. Like British, French, and German imperialist functionaries before them, Israeli archeologists sift through the many layers of historical evidence in search of what will prove their belief that they are indeed God’s Chosen People, ignoring or rather destroying the intervening layers and interpreting finds to suit their needs. The thousands of years of non-Jewish Arab civilisation don’t matter. Historian Keith Whitelam says in The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History, the modern state of Israel has “cast its shadow of influence backwards to claim previous periods as its ‘prehistory’.” The IAA is just as much a steamroller, flattening indigenous Palestine, as the Israeli Defence Forces, in their policy of archeological apartheid. Committee Against Israeli Apapartheid (CAIA) activist Ali Mustafa writes that Israeli archeology is explicitly categorised by the IAA as either Jewish/Israeli or Arab/Muslim in a process whereby ancient artefacts that supposedly belong to the Biblical era are actively sought after, while supposedly encouraging Palestinians to do the same concerning later Islamic periods. Following the Oslo peace process, Israel claimed it was prepared to assign jurisdiction of all “Arab” and “Muslim” archeological sites in the West Bank over to the PA; however, the offer was flatly refused, and the PA instead demanded control over all sites, as well as an immediate return of artefacts seized since 1967. The logic is simple: conflate all Palestinian history as Islamic (openly disregarding Christian and secular influences), and apply these reductive and simplistic binary terms to all artefacts ignoring the region’s shared past and overlapping cultural heritage. Despite the overwhelming evidence that the Scrolls should be seized by ROM and the Canadian government under their international obligations and held or handed over to UNESCO until their ownership is determined, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation concluded in June that “the museum feels the scrolls are legally held and both the federal and provincial government have expressed their support of the exhibition.”

The third event is the Toronto International Film Festival’s “City to city Spotlight on Tel Aviv”, in cooperation with the Israeli Embassy and the Canada-Israel Cultural Foundation. Along with the ROM exhibition, this PR scheme was to be the centre- piece of Israeli Consul Gissin’s special Canadian “Brand Israel” campaign, dreamed up in 2008 on his arrival in Toronto, using the same mass marketing techniques of “The Israel Project”, launched in 2002 in the US, to present a more “benign” vision of Israel to the Canadian public. The Israel Project uses “grassroots” encounter groups to hone their propaganda efforts. Canadian partners in the Project’s Canadian spin-off included Sidney Greenberg of Astral Mediaand David Asper of Canwest Global Communications, arguably the most powerful media magnates in Canada, who are funding a million dollar media and advertising campaign aimed at changing Canadian perceptions of Israel.

“Brand Israel” is intended to take the focus off Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and refocus it on achievements in medicine, science and culture. In The Israel Project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary, Frank Luntz explains: “Americans want a team to cheer for. Let the public know GOOD things about Israel … The language of Israel is the language of America: ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, ’security’, and ‘peace’”. Fleshing out how to rebrand Israeli atrocities, Gissin made it clear that his mission was to “make Israel relevant” to Canadians and use Toronto as a test market for the Israel brand during his term. The lessons learned from Toronto would inform the worldwide launch of Brand Israel in the coming years, Gissin said. Official Brand Israel logos and advertising can be found across Toronto in bus shelters, on billboards, on radio and TV. Gissin said the ad blitz would be “an attack on all the senses.” The idea was to see “how to introduce a brand into Toronto” with emphasis on “grassroots” exposure, to promote Tel Aviv as a city of peace, untouched by the wars Israel has waged since 1948, despite the fact that many Palestinian communities were destroyed and Jaffa annexed to make way for the emergence of modern-day Tel Aviv.

But all is not well in the Land of Nod. The Canadian government regularly opines it is assiduously monitoring anti-Semitism despite the absence of anti-Jewish sentiment and despite the pro- Jewish nature of the media in this most laid-back, multicultural of nations. But Canadian “grassroots” are not limited to pro-Israeli marketing groups. Despite mainstream media subservience to Canada’s vigorous and large pro-Israeli lobby, some people have had enough. Zionist propaganda efforts in this “so friendly” country have increasingly met with resistance, and all the Israeli consuls in the world cannot undo the damage that Israeli war crimes have done and continue to do, as the siege in Gaza and the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements continue.

There are now strong citizen groups fighting Canada’s official support of every Israeli government whim. There are many Jewish anti-Zionist groups, such as Jews for a Just Peace, Jewish Voices for Peace, Not in Our Name, Women in Solidarity with Palestine, Independent Jewish Voices, and the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAZ). Nonspecific Jewish groups include Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), Palestine House, Canada Palestine Association, and the above-mentioned CAIA, which has grown rapidly with centres in Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg and Vancouver. Anti-Zionist activists have been holding vigils regularly at the Toronto Israeli Consulate for eight years now. They are organising the sixth Anti-Apartheid Week to be held soon on more than 25 university campuses across the country, and demonstrations and fundraising events on behalf of Palestinians are held regularly. IJAZ has launched a campaign “Divest from Israel: Support the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel”, which includes stickering Israeli products in stores, requesting stores to de-shelve Israeli products, targetting businesses, organisations or government officials that support Israel, “organise a public tachlit service, a ritual that symbolises the casting away of our misdeeds, to spiritually divest from Zionist narratives and mythology and to atone for the ways that we have fallen short in countering them.”

Allen’s support for Canada Park, implicitly condoning Israel’s ruthless ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, has landed him in hot water. He had to deny any personal contribution to Canada Park, an External Affairs spokesperson insisting that he had not made a personal donation and that his name had been included as a benefactor when his parents gave their contribution. Uri Davis, an Israeli scholar and human rights activist who has co-authored a book on the JNF calls Canada Park “a crime against humanity that has been financed by and implicates not only the Canadian government but every taxpayer in Canada.” Canada Park is particularly sensitive for Israel because it lies outside the country’s internationally-recognised borders. The Palestinian inhabitants’ expulsion, Eitan Bronstein, director of the Israeli NGO Zochrot (Remembering), said, was a premeditated act of ethnic cleansing of villagers who put up no resistance.”We have photographs of the Israeli army carrying out the expulsions,” he tells tourists, holding up a series of laminated cards. According to Zochrot, 86 Palestinian villages lie buried underneath JNF parks. Zochrot activists regularly select a destroyed village, taking Palestinian refugees with them as they place a handmade sign detailing the village’s name in Arabic and Hebrew. Within days, the signs are removed. Bronstein said he believes signs erected by official bodies may have a greater impact in opening Israeli minds. “In a recent newspaper interview, a senior JNF official admitted that it would be hard to stop our campaign,” he said. “Slowly we believe Israelis can be made to appreciate that their state exists at the expense of another people. Only then are Israelis likely to be ready to think about making peace.”

With Zochrot’s efforts in mind, Uri Davis joined in an application to the Canadian tax authorities to overturn the JNF’s charitable status and said attempts to rename Canada Park “Ayalon Park” over the past decade suggested that the Canadian authorities were already concerned about the prospect of the country’s involvement in the park coming under scrutiny. In April, before the ROM exhibition opened, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and executives at the ROM were sent letters of protest from senior officials of the Palestinian Authority, including PA President Mahmoud Abbas, declaring that the scrolls were in fact illegally seized by Israel following its occupation and annexation of the West Bank in 1967 and calling for their repatriation. The ROM exhibition inspired a campaign of protest led by the CJPME trying to get ROM officials to adjust the display of the artifacts to reflect the fact that the Scrolls were confiscated from East Jerusalem during Israel’s 1967 invasion and occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, to use “West Bank (Israeli-occupied)” and East and West Jerusalem with 1948 Armistice borders on maps. CJPME’s Thomas Woodley said, “We would like there to be a balanced narrative. The ROM is presenting the scrolls entirely from the Israeli perspective. There’s no discussion about what happened between their discovery and their exhibition today.”

ROM met with CJPME members and initially agreed to make changes and even distribute an additional leaflet to be inserted into the museum’s brochure. Friday pickets were held throughout the summer to inform the public about the theft of the Dead Sea Scrolls. However, a visit by Al-Ahram Weekly to the exhibition revealed that no such changes were made, and the history of their discovery in Jordan and seizure in 1967 was finessed. ROM’s PR spokesperson Marilynn Friedman declined to answer questions about why ROM reneged on promises to accommodate CJPME’s concerns.Woodley said ROM director Thorsell was receptive, and assumes that the IAA vetoed any changes that would detract from the Zionist narrative. Tens of thousands of innocent schoolchildren are being respectfully shepherded through subterranean, darkened halls, and left with the impression that the ancient “Israelis” inhabited the kingdom of “Judea”, that their “descendants” heroically prevented the “pillaging of the Scrolls by Bedouin” and are the rightful owners. The mythical kingdoms of 10th-3rd century BC Palestine — for which there is no conclusive evidence — are carefully delineated and explained in commentaries as if they are actual history. A dazzling success story for the most part for Gissin’s “Brand Israel”.

The dust-up, however, continues to provide a platform for activists to educate Canadians and empowers demonstrators at the nearby Israeli consulate. It has provided a 6-month platform for re-rebranding Israel as the centre of 21st-century apartheid. And no amount of slick PR can undo the fact that merely by continuing to exist, despite all odds, Palestinians endure as testimony to the injustice of “The Israel Project” in all its manifestations. Palestinians only have survival itself as proof of the crimes committed against them, choosing to maintain traditional dress, religious faith (both Christian and Islamic), and the historical memory of the Nakba as their most meaningful and durable expressions of resistance. Though former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir notoriously declared that “there is no such thing as Palestinians,” Palestinian academic Edward Said more accurately explained that, “In the case of a political identity that’s being threatened, culture is a way of fighting against extinction and obliteration.” The battle being waged over the Scrolls is not so much about any particular ethnic, religious, or even cultural-based claim, but more importantly a means of opposing Zionist colonial discourse.

Finally, TIFF’s cozying up to the Israeli propaganda machine blew up into a global scandal, as a spontaneous movement of protest among a few filmmakers turned into an international incident, bringing 1,500 signatures from prominent Israeli public figures and the likes of Jane Fonda, Julie Christie, Alice Walker, Naomi Klein, Guy Maddin, Walter Bernstein, and Harry Belafonte to the now historic “Toronto Declaration”. Leading Canadian filmmaker John Greyson, the catalyst for the declaration, refused to screen his latest film Covered in protest. Egyptian director Ahmad Abdalla withdrew his feature film debut Heliopolis, as did Ahmed Maher (The Traveller). The protesters were denounced in the mainstream media, called “opportunists, hypocrites, fascists, censors, storm- troopers, apartheid-supporters, intolerant totalitarians, a mob of homophobic anti-Semitic terrorist regime supporters” acting “effectively [as] Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s local fifth column” by Canadian film producer Robert Lantos. Yet the protest overshadowed the festival itself and was a godsend for educating the wider public, which could not help but hear about the unprecedented protest, despite mainstream media indifference or hostility. Greyson condemned the opportunism of TIFF for its complicity with the Israeli consulate’s “Brand Israel” campaign. “I’m reminded of last year, when the opening night party for Passchendaele featured real soldiers posing on a Canadian Armed Forces tank. Many of us were disturbed by this uncritical collaboration with the Canadian army, currently fighting in Afghanistan. So I have to ask: who is politicising TIFF? Why hasn’t TIFF explicitly explained and repudiated the perceived Brand Israel connection, beyond vague disavowals? What’s the extent of Israeli sponsorship, beyond airfare, receptions, and the Mayor’s presence? Why an exclusive programme of Israeli state-sponsored features, when shorts could have provided critical alternative voices?”

Opponents of Greyson wrote to York University, demanding that he be investigated, fired, even deported. In a delightful irony, the popular 2nd Toronto Palestinian Film Festival opened just a few weeks after TIFF closed. “It feels like the days of the first anti-apartheid struggle back in the 1970s,” enthused one activist. BDS is already a buzzword among politically-aware Canadians. Of course, there was much momentum back then from the successful anti-Vietnam War movement, the Zionist control of mainstream was less stifling, and there was much stronger political awareness in those Cold War years. But the anti-apartheid movement eventually brought everyone on board, even the notorious Margaret Thatcher, who seeing the writing on the wall, joined in. This anti-apartheid struggle phase two is picking up steam, even among Israel’s best friends. In presenting the Toronto Declaration, Greyson explained that he had just returned from South Africa, where he visited the Hector Pieterson Museum, dedicated to the memory of the 1976 Soweto massacre, where over 500 school children and anti-apartheid activists were killed by security forces. Among other things, the museum documents how this event became a turning point for the world, “a line in the sand, a moment when we ostriches finally woke up and expressed our outrage against South Africa’s apartheid regime. During my visit to the museum, the 2008 words of former Israeli Education Minister Shulamit Aloni echoed in my head: ‘Israel practices a brutal form of apartheid in the territory it occupies. Its army has turned every Palestinian village and town into a fenced-in, or blocked-in, detention camp.’” Greyson was overwhelmed by the outpouring of protest at TIFF and predicted that “Gaza represents a similar turning point to Soweto, a similar line in the sand. A moment when it’s imperative to speak out against the outrages of the Occupation.”

Consider the way Jewish and Palestinian children are educated. Segregation in the classroom is the rule so that Jewish and Palestinian children only rarely mix. This strict segregation exists despite the fact that the Palestinians are citizens of Israel, comprising 19.5 percent of Israel’s population–around 1.37 million people–and 25 percent of all school children. Unlike the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, these Palestinians vote and pay taxes like Jewish citizens.

Notwithstanding their incorporation into the citizen body, Palestinian citizens do not enjoy full equality. In comparison to their Jewish counterparts, Arab schools receive half the per capita budget. It is therefore not very surprising that Palestinian students have the highest dropout rates and lowest achievement levels in the country.

Equality in education is reserved to the uniformity of the school curriculum, particularly the texts dedicated to teaching the history of the Israeli state. The existing history textbooks adopt the Zionist historical narrative, erasing all trace of the Palestinian Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”, referring to the events of 1948, when approximately 750,000 Palestinians out of a population of 900,000 either fled or were expelled from their homes). Furthermore, these textbooks emphasise the significance of the Land of Israel for Jews and attempt to prove that the State of Israel could only have been created in historical Palestine, while simultaneously portraying the connection between the Arabs and Palestine as purely incidental. Along similar lines, the study of literature in the Arab schools is oriented toward Zionist portrayals and is conspicuously lacking in any patriotic or nationalistic Palestinian sentiments.

It is, no doubt, a truism that public schools in modern liberal democracies inculcate their students with the dominant national worldview. In the US, for example, children still recite the pledge of allegiance and in France children sing La Marseillaise. But while the public schools in these democracies are today more willing to provide students with a multicultural curriculum that includes the historical narratives of those who have been oppressed and marginalised over the centuries, Israel is arguably becoming less tolerant to any pedagogy that challenges the dominant Zionist national narrative.

This increasing intolerance does not bode well for the future of the Israeli-Palestinian relationship. It has therefore become more urgent than ever to consider alternative educational models.

Since educating for tolerant thinking within a conflict zone is no easy task, there are very few such projects in Israel. The bilingual Arab-Jewish Hagar School in Beer-Sheba is the only one of its kind in Israel’s southern region–a region that is home to over half a million people, 25 percent of whom are Palestinian citizens. While Hagar is a public school supported by the Ministry of Education, it is also the exception that proves the rule.

Hagar’s uniqueness stems from the fact that it has created a venue in which Jewish and Arab children not only mix (each ethnic group makes up 50 percent of the student body) but learn together in an atmosphere of mutual respect. Currently 67 children, nursery through first grade, attend this bi-lingual school, whose commitment to equality informs every aspect of its educational agenda.

To ensure that Hebrew and Arabic are awarded equal status, for example, two teachers, one Jewish and the other Arab, are present in every classroom. By creating a bilingual space that encourages direct contact with the heritage and customs of the different cultures, Hagar promotes tolerance, while being sensitive to nurture the personal identity of each child and each tradition. Thus, by the time the children are old enough to learn that there are two conflicting national narratives, both of which will be taught, they already have the necessary emotional and intellectual tools to deal with conflict through dialogue.

Hagar is an educational island that is expanding against all odds. Indeed, the school’s achievements within the current political context–especially following the assault on Gaza and the sporadic missile attacks on Beer-Sheba–are astonishing. But ongoing local support and international financial assistance are necessary to guarantee the future success of this educational space–a space that is actively translating a pedagogy of mutual respect into practice within a conflict zone.

There’s nothing the matter with teachers that a little less unionization and more COMPETITION couldn’t cure.
– Ann Coulter (racist reactionary right wing pundit)

It would force the district to learn how to run great schools by forcing them to COMPETE.
– Ben Austin (Executive Director LAPU/PR)

Several Emerson Middle School parents, activists, and teachers recently contacted me. They informed me LAPU/Parent (counter)Revolution has an “organizer” going door-to-door gathering signatures to privatize their school, this despite the fact Emerson isn’t on LAUSD Superintendent Cortines’ current privatization list. I asked them to describe the “organizer,” expecting LAPU/PR to have committed one of their most experienced employees, Shirley Ford or Mary Najara, to a project so ideologically important to chief privatizer Ben Austin.

The person gathering signatures they described, while initially unexpected, made complete sense in the context of the class character and demographics of where the canvassing is occurring. We’ll get back to this shortly.

Anyone over the age of 30 should recall phrases including “school choice” were the clarion call of segregationists and southern dixiecrats. It’s no small irony that one of Ben Austin’s Georgetown University Law School predecessors, Milton Korman, argued on the Jim Crow side of Brown vs. Board of Education. While the context of modern white flight isn’t directly comparable to that of the segregationists, its character and motivations are the same. Let’s look at the subtle, insidious racism that fuels the charter/voucher movement.

It’s one thing to discuss the racism charter schools and voucher advocates like Alliance, Bright Star, and Green Dot represent in the abstract. It’s quite another to demonstrate it in practice. For help with this, let’s turn to an Emerson parent who is an ardent Green Dot/LAPU/PR supporter. This parent, posting anonymously as helpemerson on the LAPU/PR Emerson privatization message board, forgets they’re posting in a public forum and lets the code words fly:

I think the Green Dot priorities would be great at Emerson. The kids need more work on their character and decorum and what it means to be a good citizen.¹

Character? Decorum? No, that wasn’t a Sarah Palin speech. It is however, very representative of the language employed by affluent white parents at Los Angeles schools where children of color have been or are currently bused in. In the wealthy white world of Beverly Hills, Westwood, and Franklin Canyon, phrases like “those people,” and questions like “when will they stop bussing?” top the list of code words overheard by social justice minded parents and teachers at schools like Emerson and Mark Twain.² These racist code words employed by westside parents like helpemerson including “character” and “decorum” fit right in with the bigoted westside phrases like “culture of failure” exposed in Carolyn Jacobson’s brilliant article “The Revolution of Separate, but Equal.”

This brings us back to the beginning of our essay, in which we were discussing LAPU/PR’s choice of organizers for their westside offensive. The description people provided of the LAPU/PR petition bearer went as follows: young, thin, blonde hair, blue eyes, and female. They were describing one of LAPU/PR’s newer employees, Nayla Wren. Is it pure coincidence Green Dot would prefer their blonde, blue eyed employee to canvas the affluent, predominantly white westside neighborhoods over their most experienced and seasoned “organizers,” who just happen to be women of color? Probably no more coincidence than the fact that all of Green Dot’s top executives are wealthy white males. Probably no more coincidence than Ben Austin calling 77% white Warner Avenue Elementary wonderful, and 11% white Emerson Middle School failing.³ Green Dot’s pandering to white flight and westside elitism is part and parcel the type of racism and segregation discussed in Jonathan Kozol’s seminal works “Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools” and “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America.” One of the reasons Green Dot/LAPU/PR protested, but couldn’t refute⁴ Carolyn Jacobson’s article exposing westside racism, is that when the covers are pulled off the country club elitism of Steve Barr, Marshall Tuck, Antony Ressler, Ben Austin, and Marco Petruzzi, things get ugly.

Let’s be clear, the so called academic apologists for the racism and segregation inherent in charter schools and voucher programs include The Heritage Foundation, The Hoover Institution, The Cato Institute, and other far right think tanks.⁵ While these extreme right organizations are completely unconcerned with racial egalitarianism or class equality, they try to make a case that markets magically fix society’s systemic problems. These racist Milton Friedman cum Ayn Rand fantasies are adopted wholesale (with slight rewording) by the DLC/DFER crowd and presented as “innovation” and “reform.” No wonder Newt Gingrich and Ann Coulter are on the same side as Ben Austin and Arne Duncan. Let’s also bear in mind the critics of charter schools and vouchers include left luminaries like Donaldo Macedo, Jonathan Kozol, and Henry Giroux. This is why Ben Austin and Gabe Rose’s specious comparisons of those opposing school privatization and vouchers to right wing health care town hall disrupters⁶ are absurd on their face! Privatization and neoliberalism is the right wing position in the education reform debate, and the charter/voucher crowd represent reactionary ideas like segregation, competition, and union busting with great adeptness.

To those who would claim the motley assortment of business types, lawyers, and political hacks that comprise the pro-privatization camp have good intentions, but just misguided ways of executing them; and claim the reason extreme right forces happen to agree with the DLC/DFER on charters/vouchers is it’s just a manifestation of bipartisan concern for children, it’s reckoning time. Even if the wealthy white males on the leading edge of school privatization were really in it for their concern about society instead the money (exposed in Kozol’s “The Big Enchilada“), then they’d still be exhibiting precisely what Paulo Freire describes as “the false generosity of paternalism.”⁷

What’s more, it isn’t mere coincidence that LAUSD’s sole African American board member, Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte, vehemently opposed the corporate charter choice resolution. It’s been long recognized in communities of color that the underfunding of inner city schools combined with privatization represented by charter/voucher advocates is another way to perpetuate the grip of the white supremacist overclass. Let’s look at how progressive African American writers view the charter/voucher onslaught. Los Angeles Sentinel’s Larry Aubry said of LAUSD VP Yolie Flores Aguilar’s corporate charter choice resolution:

The Public School Choice Resolution continues pattern of indifference to the plight of Black students-that is not acceptable. Parents, teachers, school boards and concerned others must work hard, and together, to guarantee a quality education for these much maligned but immeasurably deserving children.⁸

Black Agenda Radio’s Glen Ford said of charter/voucher privatization:

“Outsourcing of public education only occurs in overwhelmingly Black and brown school districts, places where, like in Los Angeles, public property and public responsibility to students is put on the private auction block.⁹

Black Agenda Report’s managing editor Bruce A. Dixon’s recent article should be read in its entirety, but this quote is especially cogent and to the point:

Improving education is not the goal. Privatization is the goal. The targets of school privatization are not supposedly underperforming students and teachers. The target is democracy itself. Private interests are just that – private. Turning public schools over to private interests frustrates even the possibility of democracy. Charter school apologists often claim that greater parental involvement is a hallmark of their model. But to the extent that it is true at all, it’s involvement of a select group of parents, and not open to those of the entire community. Charter schools undermine what is left of community.¹⁰

There’s much more to explore on this topic, but for now this will have to suffice. Lest the poverty pimps and privatization pushers try and play the oldest card of colonialism, divide and conquer, check out the latest progressive statement from the Association of Raza Educators regarding charters/vouchers.

1. Emerson Middle School. I also created a screen capture, since Green Dot/LAPU/PR is famous for redacting reality. The image captures the Emerson LAPU supporter’s racist code words for posterity. For some excellent articles on racist “code words” in general see:
   Is the racist smear campaign working? by Brian Jones
   Deciphering their racist code words by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor.
2. In the case of Mark Twain, the wealthy white elite of Venice (particularly the exclusive canal neighborhood from which Green Dot’s ruthless CEO Marco Petruzzi hails). It’s worth mentioning Mr. 90210, Ben Austin, lives near Emerson. Cynical much?
3. First exposed by journalist Caroline Grannan we also discuss this in a blog. Could you imagine Eli Broad and Steve Barr sycophants Jason Song and Howard Blume actually doing real reporting like Grannan? Now that the Los Angeles Times is basically a PR department for Broad’s DFER privatization project, we will never see an honest piece out of them again.
4. Note they state the piece is full of “disgusting and divisive lies,” but provide no evidence to the contrary. In other words, since everything in Ms. Jacobson’s article is true, all the country club klan at LAPU/PR can do is smear the messenger.
5. The racist reactionary right wing loves charters, vouchers, and neoliberal phrases like school choice. They have devoted tons of ink to trying to explain how the free market doesn’t perpetuate racism. Their arguments, with minor modification, have been adopted wholesale by the DLC/DFER. Here are a few of their disgusting works:

   The Heritage Foundation
   The Hoover Institution
   The Cato Institute

6. For feeble prose and an example of these ridiculous comparisons by the right wing privatizers trying to paint the left as right wing on this issue.
7. Paulo Freire “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” p. 54. If you claim to be on the left and haven’t read Freire, you’re fooling yourself.
8. Blacks Not Part of Public School Choice Plan.
9. Outsource It! Privatize It! LA School Reform in the Age of Obama. An astute comment following Ford’s cogent article asks ‘Isn’t this just institutionalization of the “Bell Curve?”‘ Seems like a lot of folks see right through the racism of the charter/voucher “movement.”
10. Obama’s Public Education Policy: Privatization, Charters, Mass Firings, Neighborhood Destabilization. Bruce A. Dixon is a real revolutionary. Unlike those right wingers living in the 90210 zip code claiming and using the word without knowing what it really means.

Ten days of intermittently bloody clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces in Jerusalem culminated yesterday in warnings by Palestinian officials that Israel was “sparking a fire” in the city. Israel’s Jerusalem Post newspaper similarly wondered whether a third intifada was imminent.

Israel, meanwhile, deployed 20,000 police to safeguard the annual Jerusalem march, which was reported to have attracted a crowd of 70,000 passing through sensitive Palestinian neighbourhoods close to the Old City.

The ostensible cause of friction is Israel’s religious holidays that have brought Jewish worshippers to the Western Wall, located next to the Haram al Sharif and traditionally considered the holiest site in Judaism. The wall is the only remnant of the Jewish temple destroyed by Herod in AD70.

At a deeper level for Palestinians, however, the ease with which Jews can access sites in and around Jerusalem, while the city is off-limits to the vast majority of Palestinians, highlights the extent to which Palestinian control over Jerusalem and its holy places has been eroded by four decades of occupation.

That point was reinforced on Sunday when the gates to the mosque compound were shut by Israeli police, who cited safety concerns for 30,000 Jews praying at the Western Wall for Succot.

Jerusalem’s police chief, Aharon Franco, also incensed Palestinians on Monday by castigating them for being “ungrateful” after Israel had allowed them to pray at Al Aqsa during Ramadan.

In fact, only a small proportion of Palestinians can reach the mosque. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza cannot get past Israel’s separation wall, and the 1.5 million Palestinians in Israel and Jerusalem are finding it harder to pray there. This week police have been allowing only women and Palestinian men with Israeli identification cards showing they are aged at least 50 to enter.

Both the Palestinian Authority and Jordan issued statements this week warning that Jewish groups, including extremists who want to blow up the mosques, should be prevented from entering the Haram.

It was in this context that the leader of the Islamic Movement inside Israel, Sheikh Raed Salah, called on Israel’s Palestinian citizens to “shield the [Al Aqsa] mosque with their bodies”.

Concerned that most Palestnians can no longer access the mosques, Salah has taken it on himself to campaign against Israeli moves under the banner “Al-Aqsa is in danger”, urging Israel’s Palestinian minority to protect the mosques by increasing their visits and ensuring a strong Islamic presence at the site.

In a further provocation by Israel yesterday, Salah was arrested on suspicion of incitement and sedition. A judge released him a few hours later but only on condition that he stay away from Jerusalem.

Palestinian concerns about Israeli intentions towards the Haram are not without foundation. Israel’s religious and secular leaders have been staking an ever-stronger claim to sovereignty over the compound since the occupation began, despite an original agreement to leave control with Islamic authorities.

On the ground that has been reflected in Israel’s efforts to reshape the geography of the city.

It began with the hasty razing of a Muslim neighbourhood next to the Western Wall that was home to 1,000 Palestinians. In place of the homes a huge prayer plaza was created.

Next a ring of Jewish settlements were built separating East Jerusalem from the West Bank, and more recently Jewish extremists have been taking over Palestinian neighbourhoods just outside the Old City, such as Sheikh Jarrah, Ras al-Amud and Silwan.

With official backing, Jewish settlers have also been confiscating and buying Palestinian homes in the Old City’s Muslim Quarter, including next to the mosques, to establish armed encampments.

They have also been assisted by Israeli archeologists in digging extensively under the quarter. Tensions over the excavations escalated dramatically in 1996 when Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister then as now, approved the opening of the Western Wall tunnels under the mosques. In the ensuing violence, at least 70 Palestinians were killed.

In addition, Israeli officials and rabbis have been redefining the significance in Jewish religious thought of the compound, or Temple Mount as it is known to Jews.

The rabbinical consensus since the Middle Ages has been that Jews are forbidden from entering the compound for fear of desecrating the site of the temple’s inner sanctum, whose location is unknown. Instead religious Jews are supposed to venerate the site but not to visit it or seek to possess it in any way.

That view has been shifting since a wave of religious nationalism was unleashed by the seemingly miraculous nature of Israel’s victory in the Six-Day war. As the Israeli army captured the Old City in 1967, for example, its chief rabbi, Shlomo Goren, rushed to the Haram to read from the Bible and blow a ram’s horn, as the ancient temple priests had once done.

At the Camp David talks with the Palestinians in 2000, Ehud Barak, the Israeli prime minister at the time, demanded – against all Jewish teachings – that the whole compound be declared the “Holy of Holies”, a status reserved for the temple’s inner sanctum. His adviser Moshe Amirav said Barak had used this precondition to “blow up” the negotiations.

The Camp David failure led to an explosion of violence at the Haram al-Sharif a few months later that triggered the second intifada.

Islamic sovereignty was challenged again in 2003 when Israeli police unilaterally decided to open the compound to non-Muslims. In practice, this has given messianic cults, who want the mosques destroyed to make way for a third temple, access under police protection.

It was precisely rumours that Jewish extremists had entered the compound on the eve of Judaism’s holiest day, Yom Kippur, that provided the spark for the latest round of clashes.

It is reported that a growing number of settler rabbis want the injunction against Jews praying at the compound lifted, adding to Palestinian fears that Israeli officials, rabbis, settlers and fundamentalists are conspiring to engineer a final takeover of the Haram al Sharif.

   The significance of the Zionist mission,
   Israel as a Jewish state, and
   Israel not being responsible for the Palestinian displaced persons.

All of these issues, which had roles in establishing the Israel state, are expressed with sweeping generalities, devoid of specifics and facts. Obfuscation, lack of clarity and an assumption that what is being related is correct often characterize discussions of these issues. No questions asked and nothing to explain.

Evidence contradicts the narratives that Israel’s supporters work diligently to create. Deconstructing the spurious Israeli narratives is an essential before constructing a base for Middle East peace.

The Zionist Mission

The Zionists portray themselves as a vanguard of Jewish thought and aspiration, leading the masses of Jewish people to freedom and fulfilling the promises denied to them by an adversarial world. History contradicts these portrayals, especially that of Zionism as a mass movement by the Jewish people. Zionist philosophy had little appeal to the Jewish people in the late 19th century.

The first Zionist Congress (1887) was to have taken place in Munich, Germany. However, due to considerable opposition by the local community leadership, both Orthodox and Reform, it was decided to transfer the proceedings to Basle, Switzerland.

Reform Judaism in a series of proclamations, which culminated in the 1885 Pittsburgh Conference, rejected the Zionist program (Note: Overturned in 1999 by contemporary Reform Judaism):

“We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community; and we therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning a Jewish state.”

The 19th century emancipation movements liberated West and Middle European Jews and permitted them to integrate into European society.

“Jews emerged as writers of secular literature, enriching English, French, and German literature with novels, short stories, poems, and essays. In Britain, Benjamin Disraeli, who converted to Christianity, wrote popular novels before becoming prime minister. Heinrich Heine, who converted to Christianity in order to earn a law degree in Germany, became one of the best-loved German poets.”

The Zionist agenda evidently preferred Disraeli to remain Jewish and not become Britain’s Prime Minister. Jews rejected this agenda, which they perceived as prompting nations to question the loyalty of their Jewish citizens, as serving to impede their advances, and as reinforcing a race-baiting theory that Jews engaged in international conspiracies. Anti-Zionist Rabbis insisted: “Zion exists everywhere but in Zion.”

Examine the Russian Jews. They had significantly more problems than other European Jews. Nevertheless, they didn’t consider Zionism as a relief for their difficulties. Between 1881 and 1914, 2.5 million Jews migrated from Russia—1.7 million to America, 500,000 to Western Europe, and almost 300,000 to other nations. Until 1914, only a mere 30,000 – 50,000 Russian Jews followed the Zionist call to Palestine and 15,000 of them eventually returned to Russia.

So, if not for Zionism, how did the Israel state arrive and swell into millions of inhabitants?

By 1914, Zionism had become a stagnant adventure. Somehow, and in some way, someone took advantage of the Allies victory in World War I to promote the Balfour Declaration, which approved “a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.” The League of Nations’ certification of the British mandate in Palestine prevented the formation of a national Palestinian governing body and many English speaking European Jews came to work in the British administration Fly below the cloud of propaganda and rhetoric and the principal result of the original Zionist agenda is easily observed: People of uncertain circumstance (not dedicated Zionists) and favored by the Zionists have been transferred from their countries to a new land, while people of more certain circumstances and not favored by the Zionists have been displaced from their lands. The less favored have become refugees and, in many cases, been reduced to poverty.

The Jews who immigrated to Israel immediately after 1948 arrived for mainly economic and political reasons and not to fulfill a Zionist mission. Israel even claims the massive number of immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East (Mizrahi) did not arrive voluntarily, but were forced out of their homes. Zionism has not persuaded a great number of Jews to leave their western nations, not deterred them from greatly participating in their nations’ economic and social gains and not prevented them from integrating themselves into their nations’ cultures. The Economist (Jan. 11, 2007) mentions that only 17% of American Jews regard themselves as pro-Zionist and only 57% say that “caring about Israel is a very important part of being Jewish.”

In the last decades, Russians from the former Soviet Union, most of whom preferred to migrate to the United States, have been the principal immigrants to Israel. Many of them are dubious Jews or lost their Jewish roots during the Communist era. Orthodox Jews, who came for religious reasons and not to join their secular compatriots in common pursuits, are the fastest growing segment of the Israeli Jewish population. Where they settle, the secular Jews tend to leave. More aligned with Rabbis preaching mystical nineteenth century philosophies, these orthodox Jews isolate themselves from their fellow Israelis and from worldwide Jewry.

The dubious Zionists created a dubious Jewish state.

The Jewish State

By what authority did Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proclaim, “The Palestinians must recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people,” and “Jerusalem is the united capital of the State of Israel and the Jewish people?”

The Jewish people don’t have a central authority and no referendum of its 15 millions has been taken. PM Netanyahu might not care, but many Jews fear that their fellow citizens might one day ask: “You have a country, what are you doing here?” or suggest that Jews are more loyal to a foreign nation and are working for that nation.

It is difficult to characterize Israel as a Jewish nation. Avraham Burg, former Knesset speaker and former head of the Jewish Agency has been quoted as saying, “to define the State of Israel as a Jewish state is the key to its end.” The term ‘Jewish nation’ has never been adequately defined and there is nothing exceptional in Israel that identifies a specific Jewish morality, culture or Judaic atmosphere

The cool and breezy manner in which the Israelis express the words ‘Jewish state’ intends to create a comfortable feeling; nothing hostile towards anyone, just a satisfactory note to Jewish citizens. Cause for alarm is abundant. Israel has no written constitution. Its laws discriminate against its minorities and separate its citizens.

   (1) The entire Jewish population left Nazareth many years ago and established a new Nazareth. The new Nazareth receives substantial benefits from the government and has grown prosperous and modern. The old Arab Nazareth remains old.
   (2) In Haifa, the Arab population lives by the sea. The Jewish population lives in the hills.
   (3) Few Palestinians have been able to rent housing or buy property in West Jerusalem.
   (4) In Acre, immigrant Jews are able to acquire property but are not allowed to sell the property to Arab citizens.
   (5) Tel Aviv has contiguous populations but not mixed populations.
   (6) Few, if any Arabs, have been able to purchase government sponsored housing.
   (7) The separation of populations results in the separation of activities, recreation centers, schools and education.
   (8) Although some Arabs are able to obtain college scholarships, the large majority of college scholarships require previous military duty. Since Arabs are not allowed to serve in the Israeli army, few Arabs can obtain college scholarships.
   (9) Arabs don’t obtain many housing loans.
   (10) The state of Israel owns more than 90 percent of the land. Non-Jewish citizens cannot, except in rare occasions, purchase land.
   (11) Whenever the Israeli army wants to construct a military base, Arab property is expropriated for the endeavor.
   (12) Since marriages are performed by a rabbi, a Jew cannot marry a non-Jew within the boundaries of Israel.

Separation of ethnicities is most apparent in how Israel and most of the world differ in regarding nationality. It’s not just separation. It’s a de facto apartheid, which the words ‘Jewish state’ will tend to reinforce.

All Americans have both United States citizenship and nationality. Israelis have Israel citizenship, but don’t have an Israel nationality. Israel’s citizens have either Jewish, Arab, Druze, Samaritan, Circassian, Kara’ite or foreign nationality. Jewish nationals already have overwhelming preference in the Israeli state, Defining Israel as a Jewish state seems ominous; only an attempt to give some meaning to the preference, and reinforce it to an extent that being non-Jewish means you might as well leave

Add to the dangerous mix of laws, which favor the favored nationals, the declarations of Israel’s leaders. According to the Jewish Daily Forward (March 18, 2009): “Foreign Secretary Avigdor Lieberman was elected to the Knesset on a platform that would require a loyalty oath as a condition of Israeli citizenship. He has suggested transferring Israeli-Arab population centers to the control of a future Palestinian state.”

Israel today is a nation whose people have conditions, problems, purposes and values that are different from Jews around the world. The Israeli characteristics aren’t derivatives of a three thousand year-old part urban and part tribal society – but are associated with a specific 21st century industrial society. The specifics create an Israeli identity that is not aligned with the identities of Jews in other nations. Israel is attempting to make all Jews into good Israelis and redefine the meaning of being Jewish. This includes being agreeable to Fundamentalist Christianity, which is not agreeable to world Jewry, but is Israel’s best friend. Israel is strengthening a fervent antagonist of Jewish and progressive peoples.

Recall the conclusion of the King-Crane commission, which was appointed by President Wilson in 1919:

…a national home for the Jewish people is not equivalent to making Palestine into a Jewish State; nor can the erection of such a Jewish State be accomplished without the gravest trespass upon the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine. The fact came out repeatedly in the Commission’s conference with Jewish representatives that the Zionists looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine, by various forms of purchase.

In view of all these considerations, and with a deep sense of sympathy for the Jewish cause, the Commissioners feel bound to recommend that only a greatly reduced Zionist program be attempted by the Peace Conference, and even that, only very gradually initiated. This would have to mean that Jewish immigration should be definitely limited, and that the project for making Palestine distinctly a Jewish commonwealth should be given up.

Israelis also make it seem that the route to the ‘Jewish state’ was a natural progression; disregarding their roles in creating the Palestinian displaced persons and the evictions of almost one million Palestinians from their lands.

The Displaced Persons

Israel did not permit Palestinians who left or were evicted during the 1948 and 1967 conflagrations to return to their homes and lands. Assets, businesses, property and household items were confiscated and the owners were not reimbursed. Israeli historian Benny Morris summarized the evictions well:

I feel sympathy for the Palestinian people, which truly underwent a hard tragedy. I feel sympathy for the refugees themselves. But if the desire to establish a Jewish state here is legitimate, there was no other choice. It was impossible to leave a large fifth column in the country. From the moment the Yishuv was attacked by the Palestinians and afterward by the Arab states, there was no choice but to expel the Palestinian population. To uproot it in the course of war.

Benny Morris used the correct phrase: “… if the desire to establish a Jewish state here is legitimate…” It was not legitimate. The choice was not between “having a Jewish state and not dispossessing the Palestinians.” The choice was between “not having the expanded state that Israel gained” and “dispossessing the Palestinians.” Almost all the evicted Palestinians were in the territory granted to the Palestinians. Not since the days of American expansionism has a group of individuals (Israel was not even a declared nation when the confiscations began nor had Arab armies attacked at that time.) invaded another land, seized the territory and cleared the area of the indigenous people.

Can anyone believe that Israel is not directly responsible for the Palestinian exodus? Did these people voluntarily decide to leave their homes, face starvation, have entire families commit suicide because of their desperation and then be willing to sit quietly in refugee camps? Are these verified reports of forced removals, terrorizing killings and destruction of more than 400 Palestinian villages only stories? Why were the villages destroyed? Why weren’t the villagers allowed to return? Why were vacant homes instantly occupied? In Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo and elsewhere, the western nations were firm in demanding prompt return of refugees and fought to achieve that demand. In other situations, refugees had been created, but wanton property and asset seizures were not a rule. In Palestine, Israel seized all properties and assets and allowed newly arrived foreigners to occupy vacant homes. No precedent for these illegal operations exists in the post World War II western civilized world. We have perpetrators telling victims; “Look it’s over, let’s forget it. You want restitution; it isn’t going to happen.”

Israel has revealed its nature; a nation built on actions normally termed war crimes by world institutions; a nation that does not follow international law; and a nation that does not heed United Nations Resolutions. Distracting and deceiving the world community with contrived and fallacious narratives permits Israel to continue its illegal maneuvers. Setting the record straight will straighten the road to Middle East peace.

Don’t You Mess With Our Shoa

Israelis love their Shoa, for the Shoa is no doubt their best selling Hasbara (propaganda) product. It somehow allows them to kill en masse and to do it indistinguishably while insisting that it is they who happen to be the victims.

“I went to a villa in a suburb of Berlin called Wannsee.” Said Netanyahu. “There, on January 20,1942, after a hearty meal, senior Nazi officials met and decided how to exterminate the Jewish people.”

PM Netanyahu, if you are genuinely interested in ‘extermination plans’ you do not have to travel to Wannsee, Berlin. All you have to do is visit your IDF’s headquarters in Tel Aviv. Your chief commanders will guide you through their IDF ‘solutions’ for the Palestinians. At the end of the day, it is your army that surrounds Palestinians with barbed-wire, it is you who keep civilian populations in a siege with inadequate food supplies and medicine. It is your army that poured WMD over the most densely populated neighbourhoods on this planet. While the real meaning of the ‘Nazi Final Solution’ (Die Endlösung) is still discussed by historians who fail to agree between themselves what it really meant, the true reality of the Israeli murderous solution has been seen by us all.

However, it is almost amusing to see PM Netanyahu rushing to defend the Zionist holocaust narrative. Looking at Netanyahu presenting the protocol of the Wannsee conference to the UN assembly gives a clear impression that the Israeli PM believes that the Shoa needs an urgent pump of credibility. For the first time, the Shoa is on the defence.

“Here is a copy of the plans for Auschwitz-Birkenau, where one million Jews were murdered. Is this too a lie?” asks the Israeli PM.

PM Netanyahu, may I suggest to you that not a single humanist cares about the exact numbers: whether it was one or four million Jews who died in Auschwitz, no one doubts that the camp was a horrible place. Yet, two questions must be answered once and for all: how is it that the Jews, who suffered so much during that war, managed to get themselves involved in a colossal racist crime against the Palestinians (1948 Nakba) just three years after the liberation of Auschwitz? How is it that the Israeli leadership, that happens to be so sensitive to Jewish suffering, manages to neglect the pain they inflict on millions of Palestinians?

Supremacy and Beyond

As a National movement, Zionism fails to respect other national and popular movements. Seemingly Netanyahu fails to respect the Iranian people and their regime. “Wherever they can, they impose a backward regimented society where women, minorities, gays or anyone not deemed to be a true believer is brutally subjugated.” Netanyahu, must know that the Judaic law is not very different from Islam on these matters. He must also remember that it is in his country that gays were murdered in the street just a month ago. It is almost amusing that Netanyahu chooses to equate Iran with Barbarism and the Middle Ages for its treatment of minorities. As far as minorities are concerned, the Jewish state is actually the darkest place on this planet. In Netanyahu’s promised land half of the population cannot participate in the democratic game just for failing to be Jewish.

Israel according to Netanyahu is the embodiment of Western modernity: “We (the Westerners) will crack the genetic code. We will cure the incurable. We will lengthen our lives. We will find a cheap alternative to fossil fuels and clean up the planet. I am proud that my country Israel is at the forefront of these advances.”

I must admit that I am not at all overwhelmed by Israeli scientific or technological achievements. Nor have I ever seen any evidence of Israeli attempts to save humanity or even the planet. In fact all I see is quite the opposite. However, if Netanyahu welcomes scientific progress, he should be the first to rally for the Iranian nuclear project. As we all know, this doesn’t seem to be the case. He, for some reason, thinks that, at least regionally, nuclear energy and weapons must remain Jew only property.

Netanyahu argues that “if the most primitive fanaticism can acquire the most deadly weapons, the march of history could be reversed for a time.” Netanyahu may well be correct but one should point out to him that the above applies to Israel more than any other country, state or society. For the time being it is the Jewish State that has been caught pouring WMD on its imprisoned civilian population. It is the Jewish State that is dragging us all into an ‘eye for an eye’ primitive Biblical fanaticism. As if this is not enough, it is also America and Britain that launched illegal wars orchestrated by Zionist led Neocons and fundraisers. This war has cost more than one million lives so far.

However, for once I agree with Netanyhau:

“The greatest threat facing the world today,” he says, “is the marriage between religious fanaticism and the weapons of mass destruction.”

In fact, no one could describe the danger posed by the Jewish state and Zionism any better. Israel is indeed a deadly marriage between Old Testament gross genocidal barbarism, Zionist fanaticism and a huge arsenal of WMD, chemical, biological and nuclear that has already been partially put into action.

Sabbath Goyim

Like other Zionist operations around the world, Netanyahu is convinced that the Goyim should fight the Jewish wars. “Above all, will the international community stop the terrorist regime of Iran from developing atomic weapons, thereby endangering the peace of the entire world?”

I actually would like to stress that PM Netanyahu is all wrong here. If the United Nation is interested in bringing peace to this region and the world, it is of the essence to help Iran to develop its nuclear project and even its military nuclear capacity. This seems to be the only thing that may curb the English Speaking Empire’s lethal expansionist enthusiasm as performed recently in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. It will surely stop the Zionists from celebrating their symptoms at the expense of their neighbours.

Following the successful transformation of the American and British armies into an Israeli subservient mission force, Netanyahu seems to expect the UN to follow and to fulfill the very same role. “Hamas,” he says, “fired from Gaza thousands of missiles, mortars and rockets on nearby Israeli cities. Year after year, as these missiles were deliberately hurled at our civilians, not a single UN resolution was passed condemning those criminal attacks.” I guess that someone should remind the Israeli PM that the dispute between Hamas and Israel is not exactly an international quarrel, for Palestine is not a sovereign state and Gaza is nothing less than an Israeli-run concentration camp. In other words, the practicality of the matter is simple. The UN should only deal with war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Israel, its leadership and its army. It is not down to the UN to pass any kind of judgment on the oppressed.

Mass Murder Fantasies

It doesn’t take long before Netanyahu lists his ideological mentors and the core of his lethal inspiration “When the Nazis rocketed British cities during World War II…” Actually the allies levelled German cities, causing hundreds of thousands of victims… By these twisted standards, the UN Human Rights Council would have dragged Roosevelt and Churchill to the dock as war criminals. What a perversion of truth. What a perversion of justice. Delegates of the United Nations, will you accept this farce?”

Netanyahu is almost correct. In his recounting of the 2nd WW he surely admits here that Israel follows Roosevelt’s and Churchill’s mass murder tactics. But he surely fails to realise that if it was indeed down to ethics and Justice (rather than the usual dirty politics) Roosevelt and Churchill would have been charged with war crimes on a most severe scale. Shockingly enough, Netanyahu falls into the most obvious legal trap equating Israeli activity with acts of carpet bombardment on a huge scale. For those who fail to see it all, this is a rapidly blinking red light hazard. In Netanyahu’s perception of reality nuking countries and flattening towns is a justifiable act. Roosevelt and Churchill seem to be his moral entitlement. In fact these statements are enough to make it clear to every reasonable human being that Israel is a genocidal entity that is capable of bringing our civilisation to a devastating end.

This is a wake up call: it is not just the Palestinians or the Iranians. It is actually all of us.

Bibi¹ the Peace Maker

By now, the Israeli PM is ready to state his Judeo-centric peace mantra. “Ladies and Gentlemen, all of Israel wants peace.” Yet as far as statistics are concerned, we have recently learned that 94% of the Israeli Jews also approved the carpet bombardment of their next door neighbours. It is impossible not to see a clear discrepancy between the ‘peace loving’ verbalism and the murderous reality.

“We ask the Palestinians to finally do what they have refused to do for 62 years: Say yes to a Jewish state.” Once again, I happen to agree with PM Netanyahu. The Palestinian may as well say YES to a Jewish state, but not in Palestine or in the Middle East. If Obama, Brown, Merkel or any other deluded world leader who is still insisting to approve the validity or necessity of a racially orientated ‘Jewish national homeland,’ he or she is more than welcome to allocate land to such a project within his or her own territory. Palestinians should say NO to a Jewish state in the Holy Land or in the region. Palestinians should never agree to the existence of a Jewish state on their land. In fact the UN must follow this line and do whatever it can to dismantle this evil apartheid regime.

Khazarian United

To a certain extent, Netanyahu’s UN speech expresses some deep concerns Jews tend to keep to themselves. At the end of the day, the Israelis and Ashkenazi Israelis in particular know pretty well that Palestine is not exactly the land of their ancestors. If the Israeli Ashkenazi Jews, including Netanyahu, do want to find their roots, Khazaria is the place to start. However, Netanyahu tries to defuse these historical facts. “The Jewish people are not foreign conquerors in the Land of Israel. This is the land of our forefathers… We are not strangers to this land. It is our homeland,” says Netanyahu with total conviction.

PM Netanyahu, I will make it plain and clear. Not only are you foreign to the land, you are also foreign to almost every possible understanding of the notion of humanity. In fact, the Separation Wall that is going to be left after the inevitable disappearance of your ‘Jew only democracy’ will serve generations to come with an astonishing historical monument of Jewish national identity estranged from ethics, universalism and human brotherhood. The crime against humanity committed by the Jewish state in the name of the Jewish people is not something that will be wiped out from the history text books in a short time. Quite the opposite; it will stand as another mythological chapter in this never-ending saga of supremacist compulsive pathological self-loving.

“We must have security” says Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu as he ends his speech. And I am here to disappoint him. Israel will never be secured. It was born in a sin, and its existence surpasses any notion of ethics or human existence. The Jewish state has passed the ‘no return zone.’ It is doomed to vanish. We can only hope that once this happens the process of Jewish assimilation and integration into humanity will re-embark. At the end of the day Jewish Nationalism both left, right and centre was there to keep Jews apart. The history of the 20th century teaches us that this tendency to segregate oneself is bad for humanity and it is also devastating for the Jews.

1. Netanyahu’s nickname is Bibi

The move by the municipality of Petah Tikva, a city close to Tel Aviv, is the latest in a series of separate — and little discussed — initiatives from official bodies, rabbis, private organisations and groups of Israeli residents to try to prevent interracial dating and marriage.

In a related development, the Israeli media reported this month that residents of Pisgat Zeev, a large Jewish settlement in the midst of Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem, had formed a vigilante-style patrol to stop Arab men from mixing with local Jewish girls.

Hostility to intimate relationships developing across Israel’s ethnic divide is shared by many Israeli Jews, who regard such behaviour as a threat to the state’s Jewishness. One of the few polls on the subject, in 2007, found that more than half of Israeli Jews believed intermarriage should be equated with “national treason”.

Since the state’s founding in 1948, analysts have noted, a series of legal and administrative measures have been taken by Israel to limit the possibilities of close links developing between Jewish and Arab citizens, the latter comprising a fifth of the population.

Largely segregated communities and separate education systems mean that there are few opportunities for young Arabs and Jews to become familiarised with each other. Even in the handful of “mixed cities”, Arab residents are usually confined to separate neighbourhoods.

In addition, civil marriage is banned in Israel, meaning that in the small number of cases where Jews and Arabs want to wed, they can do so only by leaving the country for a ceremony abroad. The marriage is recognised on the couple’s return.

Yuval Yonay, a sociologist at Haifa University, said the number of interracial marriages was “too small to be studied”. “Separation between Jews and Arabs is so ingrained in Israeli society, it is surprising that anyone manages to escape these central controls.”

The team in Petah Tikva, a Jewish city of 200,000 residents, was created in direct response to news that two Jewish girls, aged 17 and 19, were accompanying a group of young Arab men when they allegedly beat a Jewish man, Leonard Karp, to death last month on a Tel Aviv beach. The older girl was from Petah Tikva.

The girls’ involvement with the Arab youths has revived general concern that a once-firm taboo against interracial dating is beginning to erode among some young people.

In sentiments widely shared, Hezi Hakak, a spokesman for Petah Tikva municipality, said “Russian girls” — young Jewish women whose parents arrived in Israel over the past two decades, since the collapse of the former Soviet Union — were particularly vulnerable to the attention of Arab men.

Dr Yonay said Russian women were less closed to the idea of relationships with Arab men because they “did not undergo the religious and Zionist education” to which more established Israeli Jews were subject.

Mr Hakak said the municipality had created a hotline that parents and friends of the Jewish women could use to inform on them.

“We can’t tell the girls what to do but we can send a psychologist to their home to offer them and their parents advice,” he said.

Motti Zaft, the deputy mayor, told the Ynet website that the municipality was also cracking down on city homeowners who illegally subdivide apartments to rent them cheaply to single Arab men looking for work in the Tel Aviv area. He estimated that several hundred Arab men had moved into the city as a result.

Petah Tikva’s hostility to Arab men mixing with local Jewish women is shared by other communities.

In Pisgat Zeev, a settlement of 40,000 Jews, some 35 Jewish men are reported to belong to a patrol known as “Fire for Judaism” that tries to stop interracial dating.

One member, who identified himself as Moshe to the Jerusalem Post newspaper, said: “Our goal is to be in contact with these girls and try to explain to them the dangers of what they’re getting themselves into. In the last 10 years, 60 girls from Pisgat Zeev have gone into [Palestinian] villages [in the West Bank]. And most of them aren’t heard from after that.”

He denied that violence or threats were used against Arab men.

Last year, the municipality of Kiryat Gat, a town of 50,000 Jews in southern Israel, launched a programme in schools to warn Jewish girls of the dangers of dating local Bedouin men. The girls were shown a video titled Sleeping with the Enemy, which describes mixed couples as an “unnatural phenomenon”.

Haim Shalom, head of the municipality’s welfare department, is filmed saying: “The girls, in their innocence, go with the exploitative Arab.” A police representative also warns that the Bedouin men’s “goal is to take advantage of the girls. There is no element of love or an innocent friendly relationship here.”

In 2004, posters sprang up all over the northern town of Safed warning Jewish women that dating Arab men would lead to “beatings, hard drugs, prostitution and crime”.

Safed’s chief rabbi, Shmuel Eliyahu, told a local newspaper that the “seducing” of Jewish girls was “another form of war” by Arab men.

Both Kiryat Gat and Safed’s campaigns were supported by a religious organisation called Yad L’achim, which runs an anti-assimilation team publicly dedicated to “saving” Jewish women.

According to its website, the organisation receives more than 100 calls a month about Jewish women living with Arab men, both in Israel and the West Bank. It launches “military-like rescues [of the women] from hostile Arab villages” in co-ordination with the police and army.

“The Jewish soul is a precious, all-too-rare resource, and we are not prepared to give up on even a single one,” says the website.

Yad L’achim’s founder, Rabbi Shlomo Dov Lifschitz, is quoted on the site saying: “People must understand that Jewish-Arab marriages are part of the larger Israeli-Arab conflict. … They [Arab men] see it as their goal to marry them [Jewish women] and ensure that their childen aren’t raised as Jews. This is their revenge against the Jewish people. They feel that if they can’t defeat us in war, they can wipe us out this way.”

The degree of general opposition in Israel to interracial marriage was suggested by a government-backed television ad campaign earlier this month that urged Israeli Jews to inform on relatives abroad who were in danger of marrying a non-Jew. The ads were hastily withdrawn by surprised Israeli officials after many US Jews took offence.

In her book Birthing the Nation, Rhoda Kanaaneh, a Middle East scholar at New York University, points out that “politicians frequently attack ‘peace’ or ‘dialogue’ programs for promoting miscegenation” in fear that it will lead to Jewish assimilation.

She also notes that Israel’s adoption and surrogacy laws require that adoptive parents be of the same ethnic group as the biological mother.

There was one African-American kid in my class at Aledo. His father was a normal, law-abiding citizen who used to get pulled over by law enforcement personnel about once a month, just because he was African-American and an African-American man driving around in our community looked suspicious.

After college and a few years in Austin, I returned to the Fort Worth area and met and married a beautiful African-American woman. After our third child we moved to Aledo to be closer to my parents and raise our kids. One day a co-worker who was also a member of the Willow Park Volunteer Fire Department (an adjacent town which feeds into Aledo ISD) received a call on his radio reporting an “NIWP.” I asked him what an “NIWP” was. He said it was a “Nigger in Willow Park.” I confronted him and informed him my wife was African-American. His facial features shrunk into a disgusted grimace and he said “That Ain’t Right.”

Right or wrong, we stayed in Aledo and I began to think things were changing. Then Barrak Obama ran for president.

My kids encountered theretofore unheard racial slurs from classmates and were bothered by the petty prejudices the school seemed to tolerate more than discourage. My wife and I were disturbed, but we assumed the bigotry would subside after the election was over. Unfortunately, it didn’t.

A couple of weeks ago, one of my oldest son’s high school teachers asked the class what they thought of Obama. Many of my son’s classmates said Obama was the Anti-Christ, vaguely alluding to passages from the book of Revelation. I was shocked and wondered which local church fostered such inanity.

Then, last week, one of my son’s instructors asked students to record in their journals how they felt about the school refusing to air the live broadcast of Obama’s speech on education.

My son usually keeps a low profile, but on this subject he expressed his sense of alienation and frustration. In his journal he wondered if Obama’s speech would have been televised if he had been an “old white guy like most presidents.” His sentiment cut to core of the issue.

If George Bush or John McCain were president and either wished to address American classrooms on education, most schools in the Metroplex would have televised it. No one even bothers trying to pretend otherwise.

This is an ugly time to live in America. There are good people in our communities, but they’re not speaking up, defending our better principles or challenging the sad elements that perpetrate these outrages. Albert Camus once said that the evil in the world almost always stems from ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.

The decision to prohibit the broadcast of President Obama’s education speech in local schools was malevolent and the rationale behind it was clearly rooted in a lack of understanding.

The vilification and dehumanization of our president is ignorant and dangerous. The racist indoctrination of our children is evil and loathsome. Why is it being tolerated? Why are we condoning Jim Crow tactics by our school officials and the rhetoric of lynching by media pundits and politicians?

The current hostilities go beyond sour grapes and unpopular policy proposals. When malcontents attend political forums with guns, it’s not just a 2nd Amendment stunt; it’s KKK tactic. When my son’s classmates believe our president is an agent of Armageddon, Aledo becomes Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692. And when rabid tea-baggers hang politicians in effigy, it’s no longer the 21st century. It’s November in Dallas, circa 1963.