[NYTr] Blum's Anti-Empire Report No,50 - Oct 1, 2007

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The Anti-Empire Report No.50 - Oct 1, 2007
http://members.aol.com/bblum6/aer50.htm

Read this or George W. Bush will be president the rest of your life

by William Blum


If not now, when? If not here, where? If not you, who?

I used to give thought to what historical time and place I would like
to have lived in. Europe in the 1930s was usually my first choice. As
the war clouds darkened, I'd be surrounded by intrigue, spies
omnipresent, matters of life and death pressing down, the opportunity
to be courageous and principled. I pictured myself helping desperate
people escape to America. It was real Hollywood stuff; think
"Casablanca". And when the Spanish Republic fell to Franco and his
fascist forces, aided by the German and Italian fascists (while the
United States and Britain stood aside, when not actually aiding the
fascists), everything in my imaginary scenario would have heightened --
the fate of Europe hung in the balance. Then the Nazis marched into
Austria, then Czechoslovakia, then Poland... one could have devoted
one's life to working against all this, trying to hold back the fascist
tide; what could be more thrilling, more noble?

Miracle of miracles, miracle of time machines, I'm actually living in
this imagined period, watching as the Bush fascists march into
Afghanistan, bombing it into a "failed state"; then Iraq: death,
destruction, and utterly ruined lives for 24 million human beings;
threatening more of the same endless night of hell for the people of
Iran; overthrowing Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti; bombing helpless
refugees in Somalia; relentless attempts to destabilize and punish
Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Gaza, and other non-believers in
the empire's god-given mission. Sadly, my most common reaction to this
real-life scenario, daily in fact, is less heroic and more feeling
scared or depressed; not for myself personally but for our one and only
world. The news every day, which I consume in large portions, slashes
away at my joie de vivre; it's not just the horror stories of American
military power run amok abroad and the injustices of the ever-expanding
police state at home, but all the lies and stupidity which drive me up
the wall. I'm constantly changing stations, turning the TV or radio
off, turning the newspaper page, to escape the words of the King of
Lies and the King of Stupidity -- those two twisted creatures who
happen to occupy the same humanoid body -- and a hundred minions.

Nonetheless, I must tell you, comrades, that at the same time, our
contemporary period also brings out in me a measure of what I imagined
for my 1930s life. Our present world is in just as great peril, even
more so when one considers the impending environmental catastrophe
(which the King of Capitalism refuses to confront lest it harm the
profits of those who lavish him with royal bribes). The Bush fascist
tide must be stopped.

Usually when I'm asked "But what can we do?", my reply is something
along the lines of: Inasmuch as I can not see violent revolution
succeeding in the United States (something deep inside tells me that we
couldn't quite match the government's firepower, not to mention their
viciousness), I can offer no solution to stopping the imperial beast
other than: Educate yourself and as many others as you can, increasing
the number of those in the opposition until it reaches a critical mass,
at which point... I can't predict the form the explosion will take.

I'm afraid that this advice, whatever historical correctness it may
embody, is not terribly inspiring. However, I've assembled four wise
men to add their thoughts, hopefully raising the inspiration level.
Let's call them the "patron saints of lost causes".

I.F. Stone: "The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you are
going to lose because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and
lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for
somebody to win an important, major fight 100 years hence, a lot of
other people have got to be willing -- for the sheer fun and joy of it
-- to go right ahead and fight, knowing you're going to lose. You
mustn't feel like a martyr. You've got to enjoy it."

Howard Zinn: "People think there must be some magical tactic, beyond
the traditional ones -- protests, demonstrations, vigils, civil
disobedience -- but there is no magical panacea, only persistence."

Noam Chomsky: "There are no magic answers, no miraculous methods to
overcome the problems we face, just the familiar ones: honest search
for understanding, education, organization, action that raises the cost
of state violence for its perpetrators or that lays the basis for
institutional change -- and the kind of commitment that will persist
despite the temptations of disillusionment, despite many failures and
only limited successes, inspired by the hope of a brighter future."

Sam Smith: "Those who think history has left us helpless should recall
the abolitionist of 1830, the feminist of 1870, the labor organizer of
1890, and the gay or lesbian writer of 1910. They, like us, did not get
to choose their time in history but they, like us, did get to choose
what they did with it. Knowing what we know now about how these things
turned out, but also knowing how long it took, would we have been
abolitionists in 1830, or feminists in 1870, and so on?"

                            **

Anti-Semitism. Don't settle for imitations.

"The cleanliness of this people, moral and otherwise, I must say, is a
point in itself. By their very exterior you could tell that these were
no lovers of water, and, to your distress, you often knew it with your
eyes closed.

... Added to this, there was their unclean dress and their generally
unheroic appearance.... Was there any form of filth or profligacy,
particularly in cultural life, without at least one Jew involved in
it?...

nine tenths of all literary filth, artistic trash, and theatrical
idiocy can be set to the account of a people... a people under whose
parasitism the whole of honest humanity is suffering, today more than
ever: the Jews."

Now who can be the author of such abominable anti-semitism? 

a)Hasan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon;

b)John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, authors of "The Israel Lobby and
U.S. Foreign Policy"; 

c)Osama bin Laden; 

d)Jimmy Carter; 

e)Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran; 

f)Norman Finkelstein, author of "The Holocaust Industry".

Each one has been condemned as anti-Semitic. Are you having a problem
deciding?

Oh, excuse me, I forgot one -- g)Adolf Hitler.[1] Does that make it
easier? I'll bet some of you were thinking it must have been
Ahmadinejad.

The Webster's Dictionary defines "anti-Semite" as "One who
discriminates against or is hostile to or prejudiced against Jews."
Notice that Israel is not mentioned.

The next time a critic of Israeli policies is labeled "anti-semitic"
think of this definition, think of Adolf's charming way of putting it,
then closely examine what the accused has actually said or written.

It may, however, be past the time for such a rational, intellectual
pursuit; ultra-heated polarization reigns supreme with anything
concerning the Middle East, particularly Israel.

In March, at a conference of the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee (AIPAC) in Washington, one of the speakers, an American
"Christian Zionist", asserted: "It is 1938, Iran is Germany and
Ahmadinejad is the new Hitler." The audience responded with a standing
ovation, one of seven for his talk.[2]

Then, in May, former Israeli Prime-Minister and current Likud leader
Benjamin Netanyahu declared that "It's 1938 and Iran is Germany. And
Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs.... [While Ahmadinejad]
denies the Holocaust he is preparing another Holocaust for the Jewish
state."[3]

Not to be outdone in semi-hysterical propaganda, Israel's president,
Shimon Peres, has compared an Iranian nuclear bomb to a "flying
concentration camp".[4]

So why hasn't Iran at least started its holocaust by killing or
throwing into concentration camps its own Jews, an estimated 30,000 in
number? These are Iranian Jews who have representation in Parliament
and who have been free for many years to emigrate to Israel but have
chosen not to do so.

For your further apocalyptic enjoyment here are a couple more of
Zionism's finest envoys speaking about Iran. Former Speaker of the
House in the US Congress, Newt Gingrich: "Three nuclear weapons is a
second Holocaust. We have enemies who are quite explicit in their
desire to destroy us. They say it publicly, on television, on Web
sites. [They are] fully as determined as Nazi Germany, more determined
than the Soviet Union, and these enemies will kill us the first chance
they get."[5]

And Norman Podhoretz, leading neo-conservative editor of Commentary
magazine, in an article entitled "The Case for Bombing Iran": "Like
Hitler, [Ahmadinejad] is a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn
the going international system and to replace it in the fullness of
time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the
religio-political culture of Islamofascism.... The plain and brutal
truth is that if Iran is to be prevented from developing a nuclear
arsenal, there is no alternative to the actual use of military force --
any more than there was an alternative to force if Hitler was to be
stopped in 1938."[6]

Though so often condemned, Hitler actually arrived at a number of very
perceptive insights into how the world worked. One of them was this:
"The great masses of the people in the very bottom of their hearts tend
to be corrupted rather than consciously and purposely evil...
therefore, in view of the primitive simplicity of their minds, they
more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one, since they
themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that were
too big."[7]

Ahmadinejad arrived in New York September 24 to address the United
Nations.

At Columbia University he was introduced by the school's president as a
man who appeared to lack "intellectual courage", had a "fanatical
mindset", and may be "astonishingly undereducated".[8] How many people
in the audience, I wonder, looked around to see where George W. was
sitting.

"If I were the president of a university, I would not have invited him.
He's a holocaust denier," said Hillary Clinton, once again fearlessly
challenging the Bush administration's propaganda.[9]

The above is but a small sample of the hatred and anger spewed forth
against Ahmadinejad for several years now. A number of people on the
American left, who should know better, have joined this chorus. I
therefore would like to repeat, and update, part of something I wrote
in this report last December, which was entitled "Designer Monsters".

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a man seemingly custom-made for the White House
in its endless quest for enemies with whom to scare Congress, the
American people, and the world, in order to justify the unseemly
behavior of the empire. The Iranian president, we are told, has
declared that he wants to "wipe Israel off the map". He has said that
"the Holocaust is a myth". He held a conference in Iran for "Holocaust
deniers". And his government passed a new law requiring Jews to wear a
yellow insignia, à la the Nazis. On top of all that, he's aiming to
build nuclear bombs, one of which would surely be aimed at Israel. What
right-thinking person would not be scared by such a man?

However, like with all such designer monsters made bigger than life
during the Cold War and since by Washington, the truth about
Ahmadinejad is a bit more complicated. According to people who know
Farsi, the Iranian leader has never said anything about "wiping Israel
off the map". In his October 29, 2005 speech, when he reportedly first
made the remark, the word "map" does not even appear. According to the
translation of Juan Cole, American professor of Modern Middle East and
South Asian History, Ahmadinejad said that "the regime occupying
Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time." His remark, said Cole,
"does not imply military action or killing anyone at all"[10], which of
course is what would make the remark sound threatening.

At the December 2006 conference in Teheran ("Review of the Holocaust:
Global Vision"), the Iranian president said: "The Zionist regime will
be wiped out soon, the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will
achieve freedom."[11] Obviously, the man is not calling for any kind of
violent attack upon Israel, for the dissolution of the Soviet Union
took place peacefully.

Moreover, in June 2006, subsequent to Ahmadinejad's controversial
speech, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, stated: "We have
no problem with the world. We are not a threat whatsoever to the world,
and the world knows it. We will never start a war. We have no intention
of going to war with any state."[12]

As for the Holocaust myth, I have yet to read or hear words from
Ahmadinejad saying simply, clearly, unambiguously, and unequivocally
that he thinks that what we know as the Holocaust never happened. He
has instead commented about the peculiarity and injustice of a
Holocaust which took place in Europe resulting in a state for the Jews
in the Middle East instead of in Europe.

Why are the Palestinians paying a price for a German crime? he asks. He
argues that Israel and the United States have exploited the memory of
the Holocaust for their own purposes. And he wonders about the accuracy
of the number of Jews -- six million -- allegedly killed in the
Holocaust, as have many other people of all political stripes,
including Holocaust survivors like Italian author Primo Levi. (The much
publicized World War One atrocities which turned out to be false made
the public very skeptical of the Holocaust claims for a long time after
World War Two.) Ahmadinejad further asks why European researchers have
been imprisoned for questioning certain details about the Holocaust.

Which of this deserves to be labeled "Holocaust denial"?

The conference gave a platform to various points of view, including six
members of Jews United Against Zionism, at least two of whom were
rabbis.

One was Ahron Cohen, from London, who declared: "There is no doubt
whatsoever, that during World War 2 there developed a terrible and
catastrophic policy and action of genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany
against the Jewish People." He also said that "the Zionists make a
great issue of the Holocaust in order to further their illegitimate
philosophy and aims," indicating as well that the figure of six million
Jewish victims is debatable. The other rabbi was Moshe David Weiss, who
told the delegates: "We don't want to deny the killing of Jews in World
War II, but Zionists have given much higher figures for how many people
were killed. They have used the Holocaust as a device to justify their
oppression." His group rejects the creation of Israel on the grounds
that it violates Jewish religious law in that a Jewish state can't
exist until the return of the Messiah.[13]

Another speaker was Shiraz Dossa, professor of political science at St.
Francis Xavier University in Canada. In an interview after the
conference, he described himself as an anti-imperialist and an admirer
of Noam Chomsky, and said that he "was invited because of my expertise
as a scholar in the German-Jewish area, as well as my studies in the
Holocaust.... I have nothing to do with Holocaust denial, not at all."
His talk, he said, was "about the war on terrorism, and how the
Holocaust plays into it.... There was no pressure at all to say
anything, and people there had different views."[14]

Clearly, the conference -- which the White House called "an affront to
the entire civilized world"[15] -- was not set up to be a forum for
people to deny that the Holocaust literally never took place at all.

As to the yellow star story of May 2006 -- that was a complete
fabrication by a prominent Iranian-American neo-conservative author,
Amir Taheri.

Ahmadinejad, however, is partly to blame for his predicament. When
asked directly about the Holocaust and other controversial matters he
usually declines to give explicit answers of "yes" or "no". I interpret
this as his prideful refusal to accede to the wishes of what he regards
as a hostile Western interviewer asking hostile questions. The Iranian
president is also in the habit of prefacing certain remarks with "Even
if the Holocaust happened... ", a rhetorical device we all use in
argument and discussion, but one which can not help but reinforce the
doubts people have about his views. However, when Ahmadinejad himself
asks, as he often has, "Why should the Palestinians have to pay for
something that happened in Europe?" he does not get a clear answer.

In any event, in the question and answer session following his talk at
Columbia, the Iranian president said: "I'm not saying that it [the
Holocaust] didn't happen at all. This is not the judgment that I'm
passing here."

That should put the matter to rest. But of course it won't. Two days
later, September 26, a bill (H. R. 3675) was introduced in Congress "To
prohibit Federal grants to or contracts with Columbia University", to
punish the school for inviting Ahmadinejad to speak. The bill's first
"finding" states that "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called
for the destruction of the State of Israel, a critical ally of the
United States."

That same day, comedian Jay Leno had great fun ridiculing Ahmadinejad
for denying that the Holocaust ever happened "despite all the
eye-witness accounts".

How long before the first linking of Iran with 9-11? Or has that
already happened? How long before democracy and freedom bombs begin to
fall upon the heads of the Iranian people? All the charges of
anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, along with other disinformation,
are of course designed to culminate in this new crime against humanity.

I wonder, in discussing these matters, if I'm running the risk of once
again being called "anti-Semitic" by some Internet readers. No one is
safe from such charges these days. It should be noted that Hugo Chavez,
president of Venezuela, was accused last year of anti-semitic behavior
by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency of New York and the Simon Wiesenthal
Center in Los Angeles, important members of the Israel lobby. The
accusation was based on a highly egregious out-of-context reading of
some remarks by Chavez.[16] One doesn't have to be particularly
conspiracy minded to think that this was done in collusion with Bush
administration officials. As the Reagan administration in 1983 flung
charges of anti-Semitism against the Sandinista government of
Nicaragua, led by Daniel Ortega, who heads it again today.[17] Stay
tuned. Daniel, watch out.

One final thought. On the Democratic Party's failure to stand up to the
Bush fascist tide. Here, from the first-person account of a German
living under Hitler in the 1930s, his observation about the leading
German political party, the Social Democrats, the Democratic Party of
its time: The Social Democrats, he wrote, "had fought the election
campaign of 1933 in a dreadfully humiliating way, chasing after the
Nazi slogans and emphasizing that they were 'also nationalist'.... In
May, a month before they were finally dissolved, the Social Democratic
faction in the Reichstag had unanimously expressed their confidence in
Hitler and joined in the singing of the 'Horst Wessel Song,' the Nazi
anthem. (The official parliamentary report noted: 'Unending applause
and cheers, in the house and the galleries.

The Reichschancellor [Hitler] turns to the Social Democratic faction
and applauds.')"[18]

                             **

Burma

It's not that I can't give United States foreign policy any credit when
credit is due (please send me examples of the good deeds I've
overlooked), but the raison d'être of this report is to try to help
readers understand how US foreign policy works, waking people up and
making them smell the garbage. American officials are now saying all
the right things in support of the protesting Burmese monks. They
condemn the Burmese leaders. They have announced new sanctions against
the military regime and have called upon the Security Council to
consider further steps. "Americans are outraged by the situation," said
Bush at the UN last week. But we must remember that all this costs the
United States nothing. There's no oil involved. Israel has not yet
accused the monks of anti-semitism. There's no issue of terrorism
involved, though the government has tried to raise the issue of
"terrorism" to win Washington's support. The monks have not made any
socialist or anti-imperialist demands. There are no American bases
whose removal they've called for. No Burmese troops have been helping
the US in Iraq or Afghanistan. Neither Halliburton nor Blackwater has a
presence in Burma. In short, nothing that would oblige Washington to
compromise, once again, on its alleged principles.

NOTES

[1] Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" (Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1971,
original version 1925), Vol. 1, chapter 2, pp 57-8; chapter 4, p.150

[2] The Forward (Jewish newspaper in New York), March 16, 2007
http://www.forward.com/articles/pastor-hailed-bibi-dissed-pollard-rejected-whil/

[3] Haaretz.com (Israeli newspaper),
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/787766.html

[4] Ibid.

[5] The Jerusalem Post, January 23, 2007

[6] Commentary Magazine (New York), June 2007

[7] "Mein Kampf", op. cit., Vol. 1, chapter 10, p.231

[8] Washington Post, September 25, 2007, p.1

[9] Washington Post, September 25, 2007, p.6

[10] Informed Comment, Cole's blog, May 3, 2006
http://www.juancole.com/2006/05/hitchens-hacker-and-hitchens.html

For a word-by-word breakdown of Ahmadinejad's remark, in Farsi and
English, see: Global Research, January 20, 2007,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=NOR20070120&articleId=4527

[11] Associated Press, December 12, 2006

[12] Letter to Washington Post from M.A. Mohammadi, Press Officer,
Iranian Mission to the United Nations, June 12, 2006

[13] Orthodox Jewish Attitude to the ’Holocaust’ (Rabbi Aaron Cohen
Speech to Conference on the Holocaust)
http://nkusa.org/activities/Speeches/2006Iran-ACohen.cfm ;
Telegraph.co.uk, article by Alex Spillius, December 13, 2006;
Associated Press, December 12, 2006

[14] Globe and Mail (Toronto), December 13, 2006

[15] Associated Press, December 12, 2006

[16] Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, 
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2805

[17] Holly Sklar, "Washington's War On Nicaragua" (1988), p.243

[18] Sebastian Haffner, "Defying Hitler" (English edition, New York,
2000), pp.130-1


William Blum is the author of:

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at
http://www.killinghope.org

Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website at "essays".

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