APRIL-MAY2008

ALSO HERE ARE files OF HIS ESSAYS on Cuba, Tibet, Pakistan

Yeti Riots

By Israel Shamir

http://www.israelshamir.net/English/Eng34.htm

The Chinese authorities did their civic duty by forcibly suppressing the pogroms in Tibet, for the “Tibetan protests and demonstrations” were essentially just pogroms against immigrants, mainly but not exclusively Han Chinese and Uygur Muslims. Some two dozen people (Chinese immigrants, Tibetan rioters and security forces) lost their lives; five immigrants were gruesomely burned alive in their shop. More people would have died but for decisiveness of the Chinese commanders.

The Tibetan case is not without merit. Tibetans want to preserve their unique culture: so do the people of France and Sweden, of Palestine and Iraq. So probably did the Yeti, the true aborigines of Tibet. We all are threatened by globalizing forces that obliterate the beautiful variety of the world. The Dalai Lama has called this process “cultural genocide”. Welcome to planet Earth, Your Holiness. Indeed, every McDonalds, every Starbucks is a part of the “cultural genocide” we are all living through. Still, we do not grill Americans alive. Immigrant-bashing is equally unacceptable in far-away Lhasa, in Toulouse or in Liverpool.

The native people of Tibet have equal rights with other peoples of China. If they want to have all of Tibet for themselves, sorry, it does not work this way. Whether we like it or not, we have to share our land with those who came before and who will come later. Likewise, Indians, Nepalese and Chinese share their cities and villages with Tibetan immigrants without complaining too much.

The case of Tibet is much overstated, for Tibet is hardly unique: it is a region of special character related to China like Bretagne to France; like Wales to Britain, like Catalonia to Spain, like Sicily to Italy, like Dixie to the US. In all these places, local patriots may dream of more autonomy or even independence, they may resent the influx of strangers. Bretons may hate Parisians, the Welsh snarl at the English who buy their homes, the Alabamans could dislike New York Jews who dictate to them the rules of the game – even before they object to immigrants from farther-away lands. But they rarely dream of rolling history back. This is a dream of the far nationalist Right, which is practically outlawed in Europe and the US.

Could it be that Presidents Bush and Sarkozy, the editors of the New York Times, Le Monde and Haaretz, human rights activists Bernard-Henri Levy and Daniel Cohn-Bendit (calling for a boycott of China Olympics) have become supporters of Le Pen, David Duke and Horst Mahler, and that after regaining national character of Tibet, European and America counterparts will follow by asserting their own uniqueness? However, I doubt these luminaries would approve of pogroms against Jews; why are the pogroms against Chinese so warmheartedly applauded?

If Tibet were not an issue, another reason would be found for this anti-Chinese campaign. Christopher Caldwell quipped in FT (March 29/30, 2008): “Boycotting Beijing Olympics is the solution that has long been in search of a problem”. “The problem” could be Darfur, Burma, human rights, mistreatment of prisoners and animals, or late abortions. Israeli newspapers daily produce new reasons why China should be boycotted, usually because of “human rights violations”. The precise reasons vary, but the bottom line remains the same: ostracize, isolate and punish China, for it is too independent.

The Chinese leadership is not weak-kneed; they have witnessed too many horrible examples of what happens if the central government shows weakness. The Soviet Union went down because Gorbachev did not deal with separatism in the Baltic republics, Ukraine and Armenia. The Chinese leaders are made of sterner stuff. Sometimes, hard decisions have to be made, and they call for people of strong will.

Such a hard but wise decision was that of Tiananmen riots’ suppression in 1989. Without it, China would have disintegrated in a flood of blood and tears; it would have been recolonised by the Western powers. Now, the suppression of Lhasa riots was relatively a small-time event, hopefully soon to be forgotten. The Tibetans were misled, now they may readjust their vision. So have many secessionists: Ibo of Nigeria fought a long war, but eventually settled for equality. So did the people of Dixie after the defeat.

The Chinese are within their rights to fight secessionists and preserve the integrity of their land, including the region of Tibet. A few days ago, the Pink Panther of a president, M. Sarkozy, said in the UK: “We shall never surrender Afghanistan”. If that French clown wants to keep faraway Afghanistan and is ready to send French soldiers to die for it, there is no reason for the Chinese to give up Tibet, a part of China for one thousand years. (French readers may be comforted: the main alternative to this clown, Segolene Royal, was even more outspoken in her calls to boycott China. Indeed if there is anything more miserable than the Gaullists of Sarkozy, it’s the Socialists of Royal.)

The Western ideologues wish to shape the world according to their preferences, and an independent China, (or Russia, Iran, India) is not their cup of tea. That is why they sow strife and dissent -- promoting separatism and secession in the independent countries. This is an old game of undoing empires, and afterwards creating a new empire on their ruins. In this game, the leftist hypocrites and the rightist imperialists work together.

They do find local nationalists, often sincere people, who accept their support. These nationalists usually are duped; unless they are cynical crooks who are aware of the game they play. Nothing good comes out of these separatist secession causes: usually, the seceded lands became a part of the Judeo-American Empire. The recent case of Kosovo (probably an inspiration to the Tibetan rebels) is a clear example: the Albanians of Kosovo regained freedom from Serbia and became a colony of the EC serving as the biggest American military base and the oil terminal.

An independent Tibet would also become a US base against China, Indiaand Russia. The bloody and cruel Tibet rebellion of 1959 was fully prepared and paid for by the CIA in order to undermine China. We know it now, because two bad guys - Kenneth Conboy of the Heritage Foundation and James Morrison, an Army veteran trainer for the CIA – boasted about it in a book called The CIA’s Secret War in Tibet (Kansas University Press, 2002). Gary Wilson has correctly compared it with the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

Marx and Lenin were reluctant to speak in general categories. Instead of calling for freedom, they asked “freedom from what? Freedom for whom? Independence from what?” They did not absolutise freedom, independence, self-determination, but instead considered whether it was good for them or for their adversaries. If a small nation turns into an imperialist tool, it should be fought against, they said. Indeed, it is impossible to say whether “independence is good in general” or not.

Often, independence is a piece of cheese in the mousetrap. Gandhi was asked what he thought of European civilization. “It would be nice!” he exclaimed. Likewise the idea of independence: If a country like Tibet – or Chechnya, - could be independent, instead of serving as an advance base for an American invasion, it would be nice. But such an option does not exist. In the words of G W Bush, you are either with them, or with us.

It is right time to give up the chase after “self-determination”, for this noble sentiment has been abused far too often. Instead we should demand equal rights for all. Alexander the Great was famously even-handed with the subjects of his vast empire, and his own Macedonian warriors complained that he preferred the defeated Persians to the victorious Greeks. “For me, there is no difference between a Greek and a Persian”, - he replied – “both are subjects of my state”. This is the right attitude.

The idea of independence and self-determination has failed everywhere; and now it is failing in Palestine, too. The vestiges of this concept are now being used to perpetuate apartheid and to keep in power some corrupt and powerless politicians. Native Palestinians do not need independence; they are not going to get it either, but every day this fiction is nurtured just postpones the day of true equality, of all and for all, in Palestine/Israel.

The Tibetans should understand this too. The way to preserve the uniqueness of Tibet – and of France, England, Palestine – lies through our victory over Empire and over its tendency to globalise and homogenize. In this battle, China is a protector and friend, not an enemy.

If the Americans are keen on independence and self-determination, let them give independence to California, Texas, Dixie, - and afterwards we can discuss Tibet again.

It is not only about Palestine

Israel Shamir about a new paper by Joachim Martillo
http://www.israelshamir.net/English/Eng34.htm

Joachim Martillo wrote an important paper called Judonia Rising: The Israel Lobby and American Society, purporting to explain, “What the Israel Lobby Really Is”. He spoke with Stephen Walt, of Walt and Mearsheimer fame, he followed the discussions of Philip Weiss, he corresponded with Noam Chomsky and Joseph Massad, he had read Israel Shamir’s Pardes and James Petras, he knows his MacDonald. An American scholar Martlllo has some Polish background, and he reads Yiddish and Polish, as well as some Hebrew. In his view, understanding the Israel Lobby can be based only on a thorough hardnosed (“non-exceptionalist”) analysis of Eastern European Jewish history. This is a heretical view.

It is heretical, because the very far away border of permitted antizionist discourse still remains short of discussion: whether Jews did similar things before Zionism, or do we have a temporary aberration connected with the state of Israel. The moment one integrates modern Jewish behaviour with the pre-modern Jewish behaviour, the moment one notices continuity of pre-Zionist and Zionist Jewish politics, the moment one leaves the safe ground of condemning occupation, - one crosses into totally forbidden “antisemite” territory. Martillo dared and ventured there, and came with strong and startling conclusions: the real issue is not Palestine. Unless they are neutralized, Israel lobbying groups, Israel advocates, Zionists, Neoconservatives, and Friedmanites will steal America and effectively abolish the Constitution in all but name to create a society of servitude for all Americans except for those belonging to the hyper-wealthy transnational Zionist political elite.

This is exactly our (and Petras) view: Palestine is a symbol, a quintessence of the trouble, but the real issue is our enemy’s attempt to enslave the world. Martillo begins where Walt and Mearsheimer end their journey. In his view, in order to understand Jews, it is not necessary to venture into days of Jesus Christ; history of Poland will do. He goes to the days of Rzeczpospolita, the Polish Commonwealth (from 1505 until 1795), then ethnic Ashkenazim constituted economic elite of the realm. They lost this status in the partitions of Poland. This is the destroyed Temple, in Martillo’s view, these are good old days the Jews miss: they want to be the elite like they were in the days of Rzeczpospolita. Jews did well after the collapse of the Polish Commonwealth, notes Martillo, but not as good as they would like.

“Despite supposedly onerous Czarist oppression, Russian Jews had higher incomes, more education, and longer life spans than the non-Jewish populations among whom they lived. They were highly disaffected because of exclusion from the status and access to which they believed they were entitled, but they were not obviously more oppressed than the majority of the Czar's subjects and less oppressed than others. Yuri Slezkine belies the myth of Jewish powerless during the lead-up to WW2 in The Jewish Century.”

In the US, the Jews (or Ashkenazim, in Martillo’s terminology) resurrected their social structure and rebuilt it, like ants who rebuild anthill after being removed to a new ground. This structure is ostensibly “Israel advocacy” or “Israel Lobby” but actually advocating Israel’s cause (“Israel Lobby proper”) is a small part of its effort. He soberly states that a USA, whose dominant elite is Jewish, is not necessarily bending to the Israel Lobby proper when it pursues of pro-Israel foreign policy. The State of Israel may be a client state of America, but America is a client state of the American Jewish Zionist elite, which is probably in the process of establishing itself as the permanent national "meritocratic" elite.

Jews succeeded to act together because historically Eastern European Jewish culture strongly controlled social and intellectual deviation. Many of the social control mechanisms continue to exist, have evolved in the American environment, and may help explain why liberal Jews have so empowered the Neocons to the detriment of US foreign policy interests as James Petras has described.

It is not necessary to look for Freemasonry, the Elders of Zion, the Illuminati, dark Talmudists, malicious Cabbalists, or some other group of secret puppeteers: Israel lobbying activities constitute a natural evolution of Jewish, especially ethnic Ashkenazi, communal organizations. The structure of Israel lobbying is a response to historical developments generally unrelated to Zionism. Because there has been a sort of Darwinian selection in both the official and unofficial organizations as well as in their techniques, all of which go back often as much two centuries in European environments, Israel lobbying is naturally far more effective than a lobby that was put together over the last few decades or so in response to a specific issue or to serve a specific corporate interest.

The same question applies today. Does the so-called "Israel Lobby" merely act to secure the interests of the State of Israel or is the real goal enhancement of the wealth, status, and power of those who pay for it? Not only does Israel not pay the "Israel Lobby," but The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy does not give a hint who really does, and in any case large sections of the "Israel Lobby" like the Hollywood Crowd do not even appear in the book even though scholars like Melani McAlister have investigated the Hollywood foreign policy connection in books likes Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East, 1945-2000. With such gaps in the analysis of the "Israel Lobby," no one should be surprised with the weakness of the proposals that Professors Mearsheimer and Walt make for responding to the "Israel Lobby."

Friedmanites have been so prominent in the economic regime that the occupation has attempted to impose on Iraq that the common identification of Milton Friedman's economic thinking merely with Cato Institute libertarianism looks incorrect. In today's political intellectual environment Friedmanism looks more like an adjunct of Neoconservatism.

Israel Lobbying in Comparison with Ordinary Lobbies

Martillo notices that the Jewish lobby has many interests quite unconnected with Israel but equally nefarious:

In Boston the Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Justice (JALSA), which is a spin-off of the American Jewish Congress, has an ongoing project in regendering American society according to feminist and gay liberation principles.

Israel lobbying efforts benefit from organizational memory that does not exist in other lobbying situations. The longevity of Jewish Federation organizations can give Israel Lobbying efforts a generational aspect not seen elsewhere. For example, Israel Advocacy organizations worked for fifty years to delegitimize Arabist points of view in the foreign service and state department, drive out Arabist officers or bureaucrats and replace them with Israel sympathetic personnel (see The Marginalization of U.S. Mideast Experts, http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/1095/9510080.htm).

Possibly because of long-standing relationships with government officials, because of the fear of the accusations of anti-Semitism, or simply because Jews are disproportionately represented among government officials especially in the legal and regulation enforcement divisions (another class of saya`nim), Israel advocacy is unique among lobbying efforts.

While the American public has not fully comprehended the nature of power relations, Israeli leaders do, and the American Zionist elite calls all shots on issues of importance to the American elite from "Who is a Jew" to whether the USA should attack Iraq or Iran first.

The political relational hierarchy and the domination of an American Zionist elite over all validate the Finkelstein and Massad critiques of The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.

The alliance between Israel and the US states is in the process of creating an internal American caste system that will be dominated by a small class of hyper-wealthy Zionists. With the sort of permanent war that has been envisioned since the beginning of the twentieth century by a segment of the Zionist elite under the influence of Sorel and with the application of the Friedmanite Shock Doctrine as described by Naomi Klein, this caste system will spread globally. (See The Shock Doctrine, The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, by Naomi Klein.)

The Israeli economy or more properly a small segment of hyper-wealthy Israeli Jews linked by family and business relations to the dominant US Zionist elite is thriving as the US economy is tanking and Iraq is being ground down. It is the outcome of which leading Zionists dreamed in the twenties, and it has a high probability of spreading from the ME throughout the Muslim world to South America, and to parts of the former Eastern block.

The Kremlin, which has never had much tolerance for internal competing power centers or external powers mucking in its backyard, saw danger in the extension of a transnational hyper-wealthy Zionist political elite to Russia and has taken preventive action against Jewish oligarchs within the territories of the former Soviet Union. It was stunning how quickly Jewish and Friedmanite groups rushed to support Mikhail Khodorkovski in his power struggle with the Russian government.

Among religious, leftist, and right wing ethnic Ashkenazim there has long been a current of thought that Jews are safest in alliance (or better in dominating) an undemocratic government.[5] Thanks to the Patriot act and other actions of the Bush administration, the undemocratic Zionist future is coming into being right before our eyes, and McCain looks like the most likely of current present candidates to bring about the fulfillment of the ultimate globalized Zionist dystopia, but Zionists throughout the political system are poised to influence any other possible victor except Ron Paul, whom Zionist facilitators and gate-keepers in the US media are trying to starve of media attention.

Abolishing Israel and eradicating Zionism would not eliminate the exploitive tendencies of globalization but would destroy the focal point of the forces that are aiming for the worst of all globalized futures.

The Zionist movement assumed from its earliest phases that it would be dependent on wealthy and influential Jews in the Diaspora. Members of the Counsinhood of Britain's wealthiest Jews probably paid for the Balfour Declaration. After the propaganda reverses of the first Intifada, the need for an even wealthier and more influential class of Jewish Zionists in the USA became obvious.

[In this strategic framework, the Zionist movement also depends on Jews, who are not necessarily wealthy but are in critical positions to serve the Zionist movement especially in intelligence or logistics matters. Such individuals are today called saya`nim. The spy Jonathan Pollard is a particularly egregious saya`an, who was caught. [I have expanded the meaning of the term in this document to include Jewish stealth helpers in Israel Lobbying efforts.]

In addition to saya`nim, Zionists have often used Shabbesgoyim like Orde Wingate during the pre-State period or more recently John McCain III and his father Admiral John McCain, Jr., who absolved Israel of blame in the attack on the USS Liberty. (See http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/01/money-jews-brain-jews-politics.html.) The Zionist movement has tended to recruit and reward Shabbesgoyim in families. New York Zionist campaign contributions have rewarded John McCain throughout his political career. Today McCain represents the Neoconservative Friedmanite position in Republican politics without — until recently — a lot of the social conservative baggage to which many American Jews and Friedmanites object.]

Zionist connections in the investment banking industry led to earlier IPOs in the 90s with little or no evidence of profitability. Subprime mortgages were a similar class of dubious investments, whose true nature was obscured in CDOs (collateralized debt obligations), and the valuation of Google and similar companies like Facebook has similar dubious characteristic. Some serious forensic analysis and financial analysis is needed to understand these economic developments, but the end result has been very clear in the development of a new class of superwealthy that is mostly Jewish and willing to put a lot of money into Israel advocacy and into influencing the US government. 

While many members of this New Jewish Elite would reflexively put money into Israel because of long Zionist indoctrination, they also need Israel as a means to hide their wealth because Israel has a level of economic transparency and corruption comparable to Italy or Egypt. The Bar-Lev line in Tel Aviv is an early indicator of the degree of embezzlement and sweetheart deals in Israeli economics and politics. Israelis have long made a lot of money in providing money laundering and other transaction hiding services both to Jews and non-Jews. Obviously, all parties in this sort of business have an interest in preserving the State of Israel to make sure that this sort business continues.

Post-9/11 Islamophobic scare-mongering as well as the Iraqi occupation has created a growth industry in hardware and software for security, control, and checkpoints. This industry understands that its profitability depends on international policies that maintain conflict through unconditional support of Zionism.

A Web of Influence, Conditioned Thinking and Reflexive Behavior

Ongoing Zionist indoctrination of the American public has produced a Zionist web of influence, conditioned thinking and reflexive behavior that is breath-taking in its pervasiveness.

Even without the presence of media gatekeepers and facilitators, journalists in print, broadcast and cable media almost invariably misrepresent relevant Middle Eastern or Eastern European current events or history.  There is little reluctance to turn Zionist or IDF press releases into news reports with no qualifications. 

American news organizations almost invariably misquote and mistranslate Iranian President Ahmedinejad, and America media use tendentious Zionist language like the "right to self-defense," "Muslim extremism," and "Arab intransigence" while almost never conceding a similar right of Palestinian or Arab self-defense or addressing issues of Jewish racism, extremism or fanaticism. During the recent Lebanon war, the American media with rare exceptions took the Israeli point of view.

Only recently have American media begun to concede the role of Russian Jews in the Russian Revolution and the murder of the Czar's family. While scholarly journals discuss the Jewish role in the Soviet security apparatus before the end of WW2, no inkling of the Soviet Jewish role in mass murder, ethnic cleansing and genocide is allowed to reach the general public. Such facts would interfere with the Zionist legitimization narrative which requires European Jews to be innocent powerless victims of the German Nazis, and reasonable people would drawn the obvious analogy between Soviet Ashkenazi and Zionist Ashkenazi ethnic cleansing or genocidalism.

Only occasionally does accurate depiction of Zionist ethnic cleansing in 1947-8 ever reach the American public, and descriptions of the start of the 1967 war — even on NPR — still include descriptions of the movement ("barreling") of Egyptian tanks through Sinai to attack Israel.

Roman Catholics according to statistical analysis are less sympathetic. It is intriguing that practically every time the Boston Globe runs a story that features a Catholic cleric expressing a criticism of Israel, within approximately a week, it also runs a story about a Catholic cleric sex scandal sometimes featuring events from as much as 25 years ago as if to provide some crude sort of "balance" that even CAMERA and HonestReporting do not advocate. It is an often-unconscious behavior more often associated with an angry ethnic press, and it may be significant that the Boston Globe Editorial Board includes Lawrence Harmon, who was editor at the Boston Jewish Advocate, and that paid entry level newspaper jobs in the USA nowadays seem to be found mostly at the ethnic Jewish press.

The hyper-wealthy Zionist elite is trying to create Israel Studies programs in which only Zionistically correct scholars will teach while stealth and overt Israel advocacy groups and individuals attempt to drive any scholars critical of Zionism from American education. (See http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/09/jacob-lassner-and-nadia-abu-el-haj.html.)

Nadia Abu el Haj, Finkelstein, Arun Gandhi, Massad, Dabashi, Saliba, Debby Almontaser (Khalil Gibran International Academy, New York City) and many others have been subjected to such attacks. (See http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/11/zionism-penisism-and-joseph-massad.html, http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/02/arun-gandhi-and-sholem-aleichem.html, http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/12/conspiracy-against-rights-in-nyc.html.)

Altogether Israel Lobbying efforts are grinding down American Constitutional rights and Israelizing society to the point where the American political system is under attack by a wide-ranging seditious conspiracy, and the side-effect of Islamophobic and Arabophobic incitement against Arab or Muslim investments or university contributions or charitable donations, is discouraging the flow of capital from Saudia and the Gulf when the US economy most desperately needs such liquidity.

Even if American gets over the current economic crisis, the alliance with Israel at this point has probably cost every current US taxpayer at least $10,000.00, and the costs at this point are rising at least geometrically thanks to Neocon-orchestrated policies.

Fighting Back to Save America

Pointing out the cost of Israel to each and every American is a good starting point to counteract Israel lobbying and advocacy.

The Zionism of Christian evangelical fundamentalists is part of generational program of Jabotinskians but is not particularly deep. Obviously, Rapturists do not care much about the cost of Israel to America, but Christian Zionism can be fought by scriptural disputation, by questioning the patriotism of its leaders and by exposing surreptitious Jewish funding and organizing.

In other areas Israel advocates have had so much success because in today's America Jews play by a set of rules completely different from all other Americans, and even not particularly Zionist Jews have no real incentive to challenge the system, when renders them Moral Arbiters, Major players in a dramatic narrative of national rebirth, Beneficiaries of programs like Taglit (Birthright Israel), Jewish networks in academia, the professions and politics, Certain of their own righteousness, and Wielders of the all-powerful accusation of anti-Semitism.

At the college level, the International Hillel Society acts like a junior auxiliary to the KKK by running racist programs like Taglit/Birthright Israel and by hosting extremist speakers that incite murder and genocide against Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims or deny that they are human.

Jewish organizations, no matter how much they campaign against laws and candidates, get a completely pass of the rules and regulations of 501(c)(3) organizations. The tax fraud probably reaches tens of billions of dollars at this point.

Neutralizing Israel lobbying and advocacy groups will be extremely difficult without a push for the US government to enforce laws equally for Jews and non-Jews. Then once a good part of the American public realizes that Israel is a terror state, the USA will be forced to apply anti-terror laws apply and seize assets of organized Jewish community along with those of Zionist billionaires as terrorism supporters just as Islamic charities have been stripped of their funds.

•Until the US government begins to enforce laws equitably, activists will have to research real estate transactions[7] and investigate who is paying for Israel advocacy programs.

They will have to put together a who’s who of Zionist subversion in the USA.

To change the consciousness of Americans, activists must fight American Holocaust religion and work for recognition that the mass murders of Jews during WW2 were not exceptional or unique,

that Palestinians, Armenians, Balkan Muslims, and Circassians have all been genocided from the nineteenth through the twentieth century and that Soviet Jews were up to the eyeballs in mass murder, ethnic cleansing and genocide long before German Nazis, Eastern Europeans, and liberated Soviet nationalities began to kill Jews systematically out of fear and hatred resulting from the Jewish role in the Soviet Union.

Activists will have to challenge American Jews socially at interfaith activities, community events and elsewhere. They must demand clarification of Jewish loyalties and force Jewish leaders to acknowledge that Americans are not obligated to support Israel and that hating Jews for what they do (unlike hating Jews for being Jews) is not anti-Semitism.

Activists need to make effort to counter Israel advocacy and Holocaust studies at the high school and even grammar school levels. They need to work for coordination among anti-Zionist Arab American, Muslim American, genuinely anti-Israel Jewish American, conservative, liberal, and other religious (especially Catholic) groups.

Bottom line: Joachim Martillo came to the same conclusion as Israel Shamir and James Petras, namely, it is not only about Palestine. And we have to deal with it, if we want to liberate Palestine, or stay free wherever we are.

pakistan

by Israel shamir

http://www.israelshamir.net/English/Eng34.htm


Benazir Bhutto’s assassination had moved unhappy Pakistan a step closer to unknown future which may include disintegration and American invasion on some stage. Her murder was organized by the Neocon team who intend to use the turmoil to take over Pakistani nuclear assets in the next stage of their world war. But do not fear future. Our enemies do not keep Fate in their thrall. They are cocksure, but they might lose. We should not be forever scared of pending changes; leave this fear to rich and feeble old men. A storm is ahead, but there is no status quo worth saving and preserving anywhere in Asia, least of all in Pakistan.

Some pundits already compared her assassination with that of Prince Rudolf in Saraevo 1914, but even the bloody and unnecessary World War One ushered in an unexpected victorious revolution and had derailed imperialist plans for half a century.

Who killed her? The authorities try to blame some jihadis, but not only al Qaeda leaders denied their involvement, not only Benazir’s posthumous letters denounce the government rather than Taliban. Dr Shabir Choudhry, an expert, commented well:

“Why would Al-Qaeda kill her? Maybe she was pro-West and went there to protect the Western interests, but she was not in power, and was not even close to getting elected. Even if she were elected Prime Minister of Pakistan, now most of the powers are vested in the post of the President, and not Prime Minister. Musharraf and his Ministers took pride in supporting and promoting American interest or 'War on terror'. They, in order to stay in power undermined the Pakistani or Muslim interest and have virtually made Pakistan a colony of America. So why target a person who had not yet become a Prime Minister, and have not practically done much to support the Western policy in Pakistan?”

The murder occurred just one month after the Neocons began a discussion on the pages of the NY Times calling to undermine and dismantle Pakistan, and take over its nuclear devices. Frederick Kagan and Michael O'Hanlon called in the New York Times (Pakistan’s Collapse, Our Problem, November 18, 2007) to invade Pakistan after it descends into chaos, liaise with pro-American elements in the army, secure the capital, and remove the bombs “to someplace like New Mexico; or a remote redoubt within Pakistan, with the nuclear technology guarded by elite Pakistani forces backed up (and watched over) by crack international troops… unless it fells into wrong hands [of Islamic terrorists]”. Abid Ullah Jan rightly noted that “Pakistan's military is not as concerned about the myth of these weapons falling into the hands of militants as they are fearful of America using Pakistan's engineered instability as a ruse for implementing a unilateral disarmament scheme.”

After the assassination, leading Neocons and extreme Zionists John Bolton and Michael Savage already called to forget about democracy in Pakistan, and instead, to give full support to General Musharraf. The idea of removing Pakistani nuclear weapons – so they would not fall into hands of terrorists – is being voiced again and again. In order to conceal this plan, they speak now of Pakistan being unripe to democracy.

This is lie. The people of Pakistan are as good as anybody in Asia: they do not want American dominance, and real democracy may only liberate them from the American yoke. But the leaders of Pakistan had sold out; and the worst are the military and intelligence. Thus the choice was grim: a pro-American military dictator who turned Pakistan into a US invasion base, and a pro-American ex-PM who was about to add prestige to the rotten regime. The regime of Pakistan has to go, to be changed for people’s rule free from Washington orders. One doubts whether such a task can be achieved by elections; probably an insurgency based on people’s will has a better chance, following achievements of such diverse inspiration models as Mao in China, Fidel in Cuba, Hezbollah in Lebanon. The insurgency is there, and with proper support it can win over Pakistan.

What insurgency? An insurgency can be good only if it fights against Western imperialism. There were plenty of insurgencies for imperialism, from Savimbi in Angola to Contras in Nicaragua to al Qaeda in Afghanistan. If an insurgency is blessed by an American president, if it helps imperialists, like al-Qaeda did (and does), it can bring only disaster to the people. In colour codes, green is good together with red.

The long shadow of the tragic ten-year-long Afghani war (1980 to 1989) is still with us, for the events can’t be understood without it. A few years ago, Zbigniev Brzezinski boasted (“How the US provoked the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan and starting the whole mess”, Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Jan 15-21, 1998, read here) how he succeeded to trap the Soviets in the war by starting insurgency against the socialist government long time before the Soviet troops came over to help the government. Al Qaeda and other mujaheds were but a local version of Contras, and they caused much sorrow to the people of Afghanistan. The Afghanis I have met say that the days of Najibullah’s pro-Soviet government were the best times their country ever knew.

Pakistan became a nuclear power as a reward for its support for the American-led war. But was it worth it? Pakistan was turned into a war base, and millions of refugees, thousands of weapons and endless traffic of drugs undermined the weak country. Afghanistan descended into living hell. Support of the war gave rise to the ICI, the real rulers of Pakistan. The nuclear weapons once touted as “Islamic bomb” became worthless as Pakistan was turned into an American colony. Indeed there is no blessing in the ill-begotten gains.

Even Reaganites, right-wing Republicans who provoked the Afghan war did not enjoy the fruits of victory. The anticommunist conservatives invited young children of Jewish Trotskyites to carry out the ideological war for them, and the young Neocons succeeded, but at the same time they completely displaced their erstwhile patrons. The conservatives became Palaeocons, out of power and out of influence, while their positions were taken over by Neocons.

The European and American Left (from French Communists to Noam Chomsky) agreed to play ball with their nephews the Neocons, condemned the USSR and warmly embraced the al Qaeda mujaheeds. For this sin, the left went into abeyance after the USSR was undone.  

Our good and admired friend Edward Herman wrote recently (ZNet Commentary, December 16, 2007) of Great Satan and Little Satan, of the US and Israel. Whatever these two satans touch, rots. Whoever relies upon their help, loses his soul. The people of Pakistan deserve freedom, prosperity and equality, but no union with Satan will help them. Musharraf served the Great Satan, and Bhutto played ball with the Little Satan. Now the NY Times reported that the US plans to use the native mountain tribes of Pakistan to carry out their war. Unless the people of Pakistan reject Satan and his allies, be it called al Qaeda or ICI or CIA or Special troops, they won’t be free. As long as they still believe that something good can come out of Satan’s friendship, they are doomed. Their country will be dismantled, and their useless nuclear weapons won’t help them.

However, dissolution of Pakistan does not have to lead to havoc. There is an alternative of reintegration of its provinces in India. Partition of India in 1947 was a tragic mistake, as tragic as partition of Palestine. It was caused by the British imperialists, who planted the seeds of partition a century earlier, in 1857. In that year, the Brits killed millions of Indians while crushing the Great Uprising. Akhilesh Mithal I Itihaas wrote: “before 1857, there was an Indian Culture and Style, and there was no Hindu-Muslim divide. The defeat of 1857 meant a great culture fracture which continues to separate our people into mutually antagonistic shrapnel like fragments.” This great fracture can be healed.

Our friend Anthony Nahas wrote: “the Muslim population of Pakistan was - and is - smaller than that of India, though Pakistan was created to make Muslim's "safe" from presumed Hindu intolerance and oppression. If the Muslim population in India can live in peace, thrive and enjoy protection under secular law, what was the point of creating Pakistan in the first place? Although it is inconceivable for Pakistan to merge back into India, such an (impossible) event would probably be the greatest thing that could happen to both countries. It is true that Islam and Hinduism are the two beautiful eyes of one culturally diverse and pluralistic Indian subcontinent.”

Keep Shining, Cuba!

[A Talk given at the Second International Conference for World Balance in Havana, Cuba, January 29, 2008]

By Israel Shamir

http://www.israelshamir.net/English/Eng34.htm

This is a great honour to be in Cuba and to speak to you, because for my generation Cuba is forever an important part of our romantic youth. I was but a teenager forty five years ago, when young Fidel promised to bring the revolution and freedom of man to the whole of the Americas, from Tierra del Fuego via Washington to frozen Alaska, and his call still reverberates in my ears.

Those were glorious days, but they are over, and for a long time people have felt that it’s not going to happen, but that we should just be happy that this last refuge of liberty still survives. I’ve brought you good news: Be not despondent -- you are not the last dugout of resistance to the Imperial rule, soon to be swept away, anymore. The tide of world history now turns, and we are ready for a counter-attack. People who oppose the Neo-Liberal Empire feel that they are not the last bison on the prairie, we are rather the victorious army of tomorrow.

The revolution is necessary, and whoever may have forgotten that, was reminded of it a few days ago by the events in my beloved Palestine. The people of Gaza made a revolution: they voted against the occupant’s will, they expelled the collaborationist gang of Dahlan, they broke a siege, they went out, risked their lives, rushed the army, overturned the fence, straddled the barbed wire, wiped off the border between two states, committed so many heroic acts and suffered casualties. Without this revolution, they were not even allowed even to buy bread for their children. That is a good example for all of us: nothing could have been done within the legal limits our enemies had enforced. There is a need for the push that is called Revolution.

The subject of this conference is Balance, and in my view, balance is the name of victory we shall obtain tomorrow, for balance is what our world sorely lacks, balance between affluence and modesty, between rights and duties, between the needs of the majority and desires of privileged minorities, between masculine and feminine, between desire to change and need for stability, between intervention and sovereignty, between superpowers and small states, between secularity and the church. Every regime attempts to reach some balance, but our balance should be harmony, that is, stable balance.

As a Russian-Israeli writer, I share my time between Tel Aviv and Moscow, and speak from both a Russian and a Jewish perspective. I grew up in the socialist Soviet Union, and as you may know, the word “Soviet” means “counsel” and “advice”, so we can’t stop giving advice. The Soviet Union had its problems, and post-Soviet Russia has its problems. I agree with my friend, a wonderful Russian writer named Maxim Kantor: if fifty years of communism proved that communism failed, the following twenty years of capitalism have proven that capitalism has failed even more profoundly. The Soviet Union did not collapse because of material problems, (Russians lived much better than Cubans did), nor because of production hitches, but due to ideological problems: the Soviet ideologists were beaten in the battle of ideas.

The battle of ideas does not take place in the mind of an isolated hermit, but in the minds of millions of people connected by means of discourse, from a conversation around the dinner table to a TV programme. The discourse forms the battlefield, and this battlefield, like every battlefield, is not flat ground without features of its own: imagine hills, mountain crags, valleys and streams crossing it, and making it as complicated as every battle on a real battleground.

This battle had changed its character since our enemies and the enemies of liberty invented and constructed a unique machine; nothing like that was ever known to mankind. This machine is a fully integrated public-opinion-forming device; it consists of mass media, experts and universities, it owns practically all TV stations and newspapers, it produces a single narrative, and it succeeds in brainwashing the masses. The owners of this machine are the Masters, or Proprietors, of Discourse. They decide what will be known to people, what opinion will be acceptable and what banned. Because of this machine, the imperialist rulers became so devoted to “democracy”: they know that this device renders democracy an empty slogan.

For instance, recently there were primaries in Nevada, US. The second-place candidate in the elections was Ron Paul, an anti-establishment, antiwar, libertarian man. We won’t discuss whether he is good or bad for us; what is relevant is that the US media, integrated in one machine, did not report his achievement at all. I checked dozens of reports; his name was not even mentioned, though the third runner-up was mentioned at length. In other words, the media now is able to undermine even the bourgeois democracy it was supposed to protect and nourish.

This is not a new thing: Vladimir Lenin in his State and Revolution written in 1916 said that democracy, even bourgeois democracy can’t be realised while media belongs to private people who may limit access to it. What is new that is the level of integration: The privately owned newspapers of old could be good or bad, free or not, but today the media is concentrated in the hands of a few owners and syndicates, and they decide what happens as far as their viewers and readers are concerned.

The media machine is so well integrated that it caters to both left and right. Surely there is difference between right wing and left wing media, between, say, the Guardian and the Telegraph in the UK, or the Nation and the NY Post in the US, or even Liberation and Figaro in France. But this difference is not as big as it seems, for this is after all bourgeois media. This is moderated difference. Once in a blue moon, the left paper runs a radical piece, but usually the Left and the Right papers in the US and Europe are deeply anti-Communist, forever denouncing Stalin, rubbishing Muslims, supporting Israel, remembering the Holocaust and forgetting Hiroshima.

But they want to leave you a feeling of freedom, of choice. So they offer a few false alternatives to the public. For instance, regarding Cuba, they offer some choices: the bourgeois right says Cuba should be conquered or ostracised, while the bourgeois left says Cuba should be treated softly in order to bring about regime change. The people automatically choose the golden mean. The third choice, seeing in Cuba a laboratory for the future of society, is never considered.

This is the new feature: until now, there was a real difference of opinions expressed even in the bourgeois media, now – it is only a show. While a socialist regime tries to create consensus, to form a single correct opinion, modern techniques of indoctrination apply the principle of balance and golden mean. They are based on a psychological fact: being offered two ideas, every person seeks balance automatically, instinctively, and chooses the golden mean.

Consider Iran; they offer a choice: should the US or Israel bomb Iran, or should it be disarmed through sanctions? Germany demands more sanctions, the US tends to bomb. A better choice -- let Iran do what it wills -- is never even considered. Even Russia stays within this frame of choice. The Russian diplomats usually say that they agree that a nuclear-capable Iran is unacceptable, though they think that there are soft ways of convincing Iranians, instead of sanctions or bombs. Are they right? Leave aside for moment the non-aggressive character of Iran. Even if an Iranian nuclear programme was to be completed, Iran has no means of delivery. It has no missiles capable of delivering a nuclear payload anywhere.

At the same time, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz (Thursday 17.01.08) published a map http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/images/printed/P180108/a.a.1801.1.1.9.jpg showing how the new Israeli missile, Jericho-3, can reach Moscow and Berlin, and how they are perfectly capable of delivering some of the nuclear devices Israel possesses to these cities. As opposed to Iran, Israel is an habitually aggressive state. Leading Israeli editor Matti Golan dreams of wiping Germany off the globe, while Jewish Neocons like Max Boot describe Russia as a major threat. However, it is forbidden to discuss the danger this poses to Russia and Germany, but the danger of Iran may be and has to be discussed forever. The Russians could emphasise the Israeli threat; and provide Iran with some means of missile defence, or with the nuclear know-how to create a new balance in the Middle East. But the opinion-forming device of the West stops them.

At bottom, the problem is with the intellectuals. Once, the western intellectuals had strong Communist sympathies, but not any more. So many of us were seduced into supporting capitalism and accepting it, so many of us became willing collaborators with imperialism. In the US, Europe and Russia, Zionism played an important role in this weather change.

In the early sixties, Jewish youth – from San Francisco hippies to Kibbutz in Israel - supported the Left. Some Jewish newspaper owners and bankers were sympathetic to the Left’s course. But then, American Jews improved their positions in the US society. In 1965, American Jews had slightly less than average income, they were kept out of the top positions in the society, and they were for revolution and change; in 2008, the US Jews have three times more than the average American income, ten times more of the high positions than average, and now they are aligned to the right. Yesterday’s leftwing Jews became today’s Neocons; children of Trotskyites helped Ronald Reagan to destroy the Soviet Union and now blockade Cuba. Organised Jewry went rightwards, and carried along the media machine which became even more pro-zionist and even more unified.

You can notice it on the key question of Palestine. It is in interests of people of Israel and Palestine to eliminate apartheid in the same way it was done in South Africa(thanks to Cuban effort), i.e. by creating a single democratic state where Jews and non-Jews are equal in the eyes of law. Instead of it, and the best one may wish for Palestine, is proposed a set of Bantustans that was rightly rejected for South Africa. For this reason, the dreadful crime of starving the entire people of Palestinehas been taking place without many protests, though Fidel condemned the siege of Gaza in clear terms. The option of equality, the South African option, may not even be considered in American and European newspapers. That is why the apartheid in South Africa was universally condemned and eradicated, while apartheid in Israel/Palestine is still flourishing.

Zionism is an enemy of Cuba and of every free Latin American state: Israel, the perpetrator of apartheid, always votes against Cuba in every round of voting in the UN and elsewhere. The best friends of Israel in the US are Bush and Giuliani, great enemies of Cuba. Israel supplied the Contras with weapons to fight the Sandinistas. Israeland organised American Jewry actively participate in the campaign against Hugo Chavez.

There are many men and women in Israel who love Cuba, who listen to your music and wear Che t-shirts, but the power in apartheid Israel belongs to somebody else, to enemies of Cuba and enemies of socialism. Likewise, there are many American Jews who love Cuba, but the powerful Jewish organisations are against Cuba and against Chavez.

The pro-Zionist Left had become a “good cop”, playing together with the bad cop of the Right, but leading to the same goal. This good leftist cop did much to undermine the Soviet Union. The British media lord Robert Maxwell, who befriended the Soviet leaders and published their books abroad, was an agent of the Mossad, the Israeli secret service. With such friends, the Soviets did not need enemies.

Our enemies say that a state-controlled media is not free. For them, ‘free media’ is only the media owned by rich media lords. I never could understand why a newspaper that belongs to a Rothschild (like the French Liberation) or an Asper (as all Canadian papers) is automatically freer than a newspaper that belongs to people, even through the state.

The state-owned media is an important asset which should be maintained in the interest of the people. Private-owned media will sooner or later be taken over by a rich media lord and integrated in the same machine. But the state-owned media must learn to offer choice. We know that there is pro-Western opposition in Cuba. We hear their voices through Western media. But there are also dissidents of the opposite persuasion, people who want more communism. I understand, their views are considered somewhat dated. But it makes sense to let them voice their views, so their voices will counter-balance those of pro-Western intellectuals, and our views will then rightly be considered the golden mean. In the Soviet Union, the collapse occurred BECAUSE the state-owned media was taken over by pro-Western apparatchiki, and they effectively blocked people’s access to other opinions.

The Internet should be eagerly embraced: first of all, because our positions are strong on the Web. The Masters of Discourse do not control the Web yet. There are thousands of sites friendly to Cuba and to the ideas of equality, sites that unmask the neo-liberal lies. Secondly, the Internet is very affordable. Nowadays, there is no need for cables, mobile internet can reach every village, every student can have it. For Cuba, where books are expensive and hard to get, the Internet offers the best solution. Educated Cubans will become an important element in the world battle of ideas, and they should be trained for this role. The Internet allows for that, as there are thousands of discussions at the same time.

The collapse of the USSR was caused to a great extent by the educated classes of Russia, the intelligentsia, which was very pro-Western in the final days of the USSR. One of the reasons was that the Soviet style of discourse did not allow for open discussion. They had never read Chomsky, they never listened to Fidel, in those days there was no Internet. They did not know of the strong anti-imperialist groups and voices in the West. They were innocent: they thought they were going to live like Harvard professors, while the whole of Russia would live like Switzerland, after the switch to capitalism. As a result, Russia suffered a lot, its assets were robbed, and the country was on the verge of total breakdown. The intelligentsia suffered a lot. Their fate was summed up by Viktor Pelevin, whose books I warmly recommend to you. He wrote: in the communist days, the Russian intelligentsia was supposed to kiss the ass of the Red Dragon and they were poorly paid for doing it. They hated the Dragon, and poisoned him with lipstick they received from the Green Toad. But soon they learned that the Green Toad does not need millions of intelligentsia, it needs only three intellectuals who can give oral sex to the Toad 24 hours a day while smiling delightfully.

The majority of the Russian people are deeply dissatisfied with capitalism – not only because their personal fate changed for the worse, but because capitalism made Russia subservient to the West. Now president Putin, who is a moderate nationalist, has taken a more patriotic course, and things have improved a bit, but even today, if there were true and open democracy, Russians would vote for an even stronger anti-Yankee and anti-neo-liberal course. Now capitalism is going through its deepest crisis in a long time, when much-sought dollars became valueless paper. The socialist view must be allowed to be actively presented in the media. And not only socialist: non-liberal, anti-bourgeois views in general should be let in.

While pretending that they are non-opinionated and non-committed, the Masters of Discourse are devoted to a pseudo-liberal, or neo-liberal paradigm. It calls for freedom of individual, for exclusion of the church from active life, for human rights, for the rights of women. It sounds good but these dogmas have to be balanced in order to be acceptable. Otherwise the society will be unbalanced.

For instance, human rights. Is not it a noble concept? But in the name of this concept, countries were conquered and hundreds of thousands were slaughtered. Cuba is frequently attacked for its “human rights’ abuses”, for it limits these rights when they transgress the rights of the society. Our adversaries deny that society also has rights; for them only individuals, and preferably those with a lot of money, have rights. I was asked about the human rights in Cuba on a Russian TV programme, and I said: Indeed, in Cuba, there are horrible abuses of human rights, and we should speak against it. In Guantanamo, Cuba. But surprisingly, they did not want to discuss it. The concept of human rights has to be balanced by obligations to society, said important Communist philosopher Simone Weil in her book called The Need for Roots, or Prelude to a Declaration of Duties towards Mankind. Rights; in her view, were 'subordinate and relative' to obligations. Simone Weil could give this correct answer because she refused the trap of liberalism. She refused to pay even lip service to liberal dogmas.

Rights of sexual minorities. Gays’ right to adopt children should be balanced by the right of children to have real father and mother. Their right to get “married” should be balanced by right of men and women to enter a unique sacral union called marriage. Likewise, a man’s right to eat pork should be limited by right of a collective of Jews or Muslims to have a place that is not desecrated by pork. This is not an unimportant issue: ordinary people, the vast majority everywhere, are against giving priority to sexual minorities’ rights over their rights to family life. In the US, this issue is used to create a schism between progressive activists and the masses.

Right to worship. Animosity between socialists, or communists and the church is not inherent; it happened within a certain historical context and it may now be over. At the acme of Revolution, in 1918, the great Russian poet Alexander Block envisioned the Red soldiers being led by an invisible Jesus Christ. If Russian Communists would create harmony with the Church, Communism would survive. It is good that in Cuba churches are open, that you have positive relations with the Catholic Church with its liberation theology wing, and care for your own colourful Santeria. But peace with the church means more interaction both ways. In the 19^th century, the colonial government of Cuba deported Catholic priests en masse because they supported revolution. The present government may reverse that trend. In the Latin America, there are many pro-socialist priests and bishops, and they could be brought to Cuba, while anti-socialist ones may be asked to retire. Cuba may insist on its right to select the bishops in order to ensure that more progressive priests will take these positions. If Revolution embraces the Church, the Church may embrace Revolution.

And the last thing I want to tell you: be sure of your righteousness. You are on the right path. Life in Cuba has improve steadily since the 1990s. You still have the wise leader, Fidel Castro, who is akin to Noam Chomsky for his radical thought; he has strong will and the support of the masses, the dream of Plato’s philosopher-king. You still have people who fought off the American aggression, who brought low the armoured corps of Apartheid in the savannas of Angola; you have many people with the best education in the world. You are the light of the world -- keep shining, Cuba!