Email this article | Print this article | Link to this Article
If you don't get MER, you just don't
get it!
29 Oct
2004 - MiddleEast.Org - MER is
Free |
News,
Views, &
Analysis Governments,
Lobbies, & the
Corporate Media Don't Want You To Know
The most honest, most
comprehensive, and most
mobilizing news and
analysis on the Middle
East always comes from
MER. It is
indispensable!"
Robert
Silverman - Salamanca, Spain
MER - We Never Stop Working For You!
|
|
U.S. WAR
Against the World
After November 2nd?
"Never have so many liberal hands been wrung over a
candidate whose only
memorable statements seek to out-Bush Bush....
The most enduring silence is that which guards the system that
has
produced these catastrophic events... Americanism, the
ideology, has meant democracy at home, for
some,
and a war on democracy abroad."
"From Guatemala to Iran, from Chile to Nicaragua, to the struggle
for
freedom in South Africa, to present-day Venezuela, American
state
terrorism, licensed by both Republican and Democrat
administrations,
has fought democrats and sponsored totalitarians.
Most societies
attacked or otherwise subverted by American power
are weak and
defenceless, and there is a logic to this. Should a small
country
succeed in breaking free and establish its own way of
developing, then
its good example to others
becomes a threat to Washington."
MIDDLEEAST.ORG - MER - Washington - 29 October: Whether
the Americans are lead by Bush and the neocons, or by Kerry and the
neoliberals, the reality is that both of the great American political
parties are today dominated by their super-hawkish Israeli-connected
elements and that both are heavily mortgaged to major, however
competing, segments of the Israeli-Jewish lobby in Washington.
If Bush/Cheney and the
largely Jewish neocons (aligned ironically with the Christian
evangelicals) remain in power as seems likely, expect even more
militant and aggressive policies in the years ahead. This go around
they will likely and loudly proclaim a mandate and they will use it
ruthlessly.
If Kerry along with Biden,
Lieberman, and the 'Committee on the Present Danger' crowd take power
expect different rhetoric, frantic attempts at internationalization,
but policies that may be far closer to those of Bush/Cheney then many
of their fervent supporters may be able to easily tolerate.
Remember after all that Democrat John Kerry, greatly encouraged by
likely Secretary of State Senator Joseph Biden, pushed hard to make non
other than soft-spoken hard-hitting Republican John McCain his
Vice-Presidential running mate.
Sometimes it takes a foreign observer to be able to
more clearly see, and to dare to clearly articulate, the actual realities
and failings of a great super power like the United States. Two of those who do so best are British
journalists, Robert Fisk and in this case John Pilger in the following article he published this week.
Pilger is a well-known, widely published, and much-acclaimed British
journalist from Australia -- throughout much of the world that
is. He remains quite unknown in the crucial USA however where the corporate
media and those who control the talk-show circuit rarely give him the forum he so rightly deserves.
Will there be a war against the world
after November 2?
By
John Pilger
10/28/04 -- There is a
surreal quality about visiting the United States
in the last days of the presidential campaign. If George W Bush
wins,
according to a scientist I met, who escaped Nazi-dominated Europe,
America will surrender many of its democratic trappings and succumb to
its totalitarian impulses. If John Kerry wins, according to most
Democrat voters, the only mandate he will have is that he is not
Bush.
Never have so many liberal hands been wrung over a candidate whose only
memorable statements seek to out-Bush Bush. Take Iran. One of Kerry's
national security advisers, Susan Rice, has accused Bush of 'standing
on the sidelines while Iran's nuclear programme has been advanced'.
There is not a shred of evidence that Iran is developing nuclear
weapons, yet Kerry is joining in the same orchestrated frenzy that led
to the invasion of Iraq. Having begun his campaign by promising another
40,000 troops for Iraq, he is said to have a 'secret plan to end the
war' which foresees a withdrawal in four years. This is an echo of
Richard Nixon, who in the 1968 presidential campaign promised a 'secret
plan' to end the war in Vietnam.
Once in office, he accelerated the slaughter and the war dragged on for
six and a half years. For Kerry, like Nixon, the message is that he is
not a wimp. Nothing in his campaign or his career suggests he will not
continue, even escalate, the 'war on terror', which is now sanctified
as a crusade of Americanism like that against communism. No Democratic
president has shirked such a task: John Kennedy on the cold war, Lyndon
Johnson on Vietnam.
This presents great danger for all of us, but none of it is allowed to
intrude upon the campaign or the media 'coverage'. In a supposedly free
and open society, the degree of censorship by omission is
staggering.The New York Times, the country's liberal standard-bearer,
having recovered from a mild bout of contrition over its abject failure
to challenge Bush's lies about Iraq, has been running tombstones of
column inches about what-went-wrong in the 'liberation' of that
country.
It blames mistakes: tactical oversights, faulty intelligence. Not a
word suggests that the invasion was a colonial conquest, deliberate
like any other, and that 60 years of international law make it 'the
paramount war crime', to quote the Nuremberg judges. Not a word
suggests that the American onslaught on the population of Iraq was and
is systematically atrocious, of which the torture of prisoners at Abu
Ghraib was merely a glimpse.
The coming atrocity in the city of Fallujah, in which British troops,
against the wishes of the British people, are to be accessories, is a
case in point. For American politicians and journalists - there are a
few honourable exceptions - the US marines are preparing for another of
their "battles". Their last attack on Fallujah, in April, provides a
preview. Forty-ton battle tanks and helicopter gunships were used
against slums. Aircraft dropped 500lb bombs: marine snipers killed old
people, women and children; ambulances were shot at. The marines closed
the only hospital in a city of 300,000 for more than two weeks, so they
could use it as a military position.
When it was estimated they had slaughtered 600 people, there was no
denial. This was more than all the victims of the suicide bombs the
previous year. Neither did they deny that their barbarity was in
revenge for the killing of four American mercenaries in the city; led
by avowed cowboys, they are specialists in revenge. John Kerry said
nothing; the media reported the atrocity as 'a military operation',
against 'foreign militants' and 'insugents', never against civilians
and Iraqis defending their homes and homeland.
Moreover, the American people are almost totally unaware that the
marines were driven out of Fallujah by heroic street fighting.
Americans remain unaware, too, of the piracy that comes with their
government's murderous adventure. Who in public life asks the
whereabouts of the 18.46 bn dollars which the US Congress approved for
reconstruction and humanitarian aid in Iraq?
As Unicef reports, most hospitals are bereft even of pain-killers, and
acute malnutrition among children has doubled since the 'liberation'.
In fact, less than 29m dollars has been allocated, most of it on
British security firms, with their ex-SAS thugs and veterans of South
African apartheid. Where is the rest of this money that should be
helping to save lives? Non-wimp Kerry dares not ask.
Neither does he nor anybody else with a public profile ask why the
people of Iraq have been forced to pay, since the fall of Saddam,
almost 80m dollars to America and Britain as 'reparations'. Even Israel
has received an untold fortune in Iraqi oil money as compensation for
its 'loss of tourism' in the Golan Heights - part of Syria it occupies
illegally. As for oil, the 'o-word' is unmentionable in the contest for
the world's most powerful job. So successful is the resistance in its
campaign of economic sabotage that the vital pipeline carrying oil to
the Turkish Mediterranean has been blown up 37 times. Terminals in the
south are under constant attack, effectively shutting down all exports
of crude oil and threatening national economies. That the world may
have lost Iraqi oil is enveloped by the same silence that ensures
Americans have little idea of the nature and scale of the blood-letting
conducted in their name.
The most enduring silence is that which guards the system that has
produced these catastrophic events. This is Americanism, though it
dares not speak its name, which is strange, as its opposite,
anti-Americanism, has long been successfully deployed as a pejorative,
catch-all response to critical analysis of an imperial system and its
myths. Americanism, the ideology, has meant democracy at home, for
some, and a war on democracy abroad.
From Guatemala to Iran, from Chile to Nicaragua, to the struggle for
freedom in South Africa, to present-day Venezuela, American state
terrorism, licensed by both Republican and Democrat administrations,
has fought democrats and sponsored totalitarians. Most societies
attacked or otherwise subverted by American power are weak and
defenceless, and there is a logic to this. Should a small country
succeed in breaking free and establish its own way of developing, then
its good example to others becomes a threat to Washington.
And the serious purpose behind this? Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton's
secretary of state, once told the United Nations that America had the
right to 'unilateral use of power' to ensure 'uninhibited access to key
markets, energy supplies and strategic resources'. Or as Colin Powell,
the Bush-ite laughably promoted by the media as a liberal, put it more
than a decade ago: "I want to be the bully on the block." Britain's
imperialists believed exactly that, and still do; only the language is
discreet.
That is why people all over the world, whose consciousness about these
matters has risen sharply in the past few years, are 'anti-American'.
It has nothing to do with the ordinary people of the United States, who
now watch a Darwanian capitalism consume their real and fabled freedoms
and reduce the 'free market' to a fire-sale of public assets. It is
remarkable, if not inspiring, that so many reject the class and race
based brainwashing, begun in childhood, that such a class and race
based system is called 'the American dream'.
What will happen if the nightmare in Iraq goes on? Perhaps those
millions of worried Americans, who are currently paralysed by wanting
to get rid of Bush at any price, will shake off their ambivalence,
regardless of who wins on
2 November. Then, will a giant awaken, as it did during the civil
rights campaign and the Vietnam war and the great movement to freeze
nuclear weapons? One must trust so; the alternative is a war on the
world.
* John
Pilger is a well-known, widely published, and much-acclaimed British
journalist from Australia -- throughout much of the world that
is. But he remains relatively unknown in the United States, about
which he often writes boldly and courageously. Other than
occasional university appearances in the U.S., the American corporate
media and talk-show circuit rarely are willing to give Pilger the forum
he most definitely deserves.
|
MID-EAST
REALITIES - www.MiddleEast.Org
Phone: (202)
362-5266 Fax:
(815) 366-0800 Email: MER@MiddleEast.Org
Copyright ©
2004 Mid-East Realities, All rights reserved
|
|
as
|
October 2004
Iran Next - Part 1 (October 31, 2004)
In a few days the American election itself will be history. The likelihood is the Bush/Cheney/neocon regime will remain in power; hard as that still is for so many to imagine and understand. Should the Democrats win the White House Middle East policies will be largely in the hands of the neoliberals and the super money-men like Haim Saban who when it comes to the Middle East and Israel have far more in common with the neocons than has yet been realized by many who will vote for them. Whatever happens on Tuesday next the build-up to attacking and if at all possible regime changing Iran is well underway and the showdown increasingly imminent.
Osama, Bush, Kerry - Past, Present, Future (October 30, 2004)
Few Middle East realities have been heard during this long grueling American election campaign. Most of the rhetoric has been extraordinarily self-righteous and self-serving, disingenuous and dishonest. Sad and tragic as it is to have to say, for many in the Middle East and around the world beyond American shores, tactics aside, the words of Osama Bin Laden ring more true to their experience and perspective regarding U.S. foreign policy than those of either George Bush or John Kerry.
Fahrenheit 9/11 - Watch It On Your Computer This Weekend (October 30, 2004)
Who would have imagined on 9/11 more than three years ago now that the top front-page story in the Washington Post Saturday before the 2004 election would be a picture of Osama Bin Laden addressing the American people! Reality keeps trumping fiction time after time in our era!
Escalating War Against the World after November 2nd? (October 29, 2004)
Whether the Americans are lead by Bush and the neocons, or by Kerry and the neoliberals, the reality is that both of the great American political parties are today dominated by their super-hawkish Israeli-connected elements and that both are heavily mortgaged to major, however competing, segments of the Israeli-Jewish lobby in Washington.
ARAFAT - Pathetic Symbolism for the 'Grand Old Man' of the Palestinians (October 29, 2004)
There is often such pathetic symbolism surrounding Yasser Arafat even as many of his people cling to his legacy as the 'symbol of Palestinian nationalism' -- itself nearly as tattered and frail as the Grand Old Man has himself become.
Bush Uncensored; Cheney Unauthorized (October 28, 2004)
MAKE SURE TO WATCH THESE TWO VIDEOS
ABOUT GEORGE BUSH and DICK CHENEY
Gaza Scam + Dem Party Emails American Jews (October 27, 2004)
The price for the past political trickery has already been very high. The poison of the Israeli-Arab conflict has spread continually for decades now and played a substantial role in bringing about today's 'Clash of Civilizations' whose end is yet in sight. The eventual future price for what is happening these days threatens to be higher yet, potentially catastrophic.
IRAN Attack Imminent? (October 24, 2004)
Though few in the world may fully realize it, international society is now at a historic moment and the future, even a potential World War III, is in the balance. Hence the leaks coming from Washington from those trying to warn, and to prevent, what the top neocons and Israeli operatives are pushing hard to bring about. Hence last month's extremely unusual 'Israeli Spy Scandal' which had officials in the FBI charging people working on the Iranian attack in coordination with the Israeli-Jewish lobby with espionage for Israel. Hence, as this article by a former National Security Council operative suggests: "Intelligence circles report that both intelligence agencies (CIA and Pentagon) are in open revolt against the Bush White House." It appears to have been quickly written and then quickly internet published using LebanonWire in the Middle East.
Cheney Uncovered - An Unauthorized Documentary by the CBC (October 23, 2004)
Reporter Jean Heller presented Soviet satellite photos which did not show Iraqi troops amassed on the Saudi border to the Pentagon.
"It's what it (the photos) didn't show that's more important. What you expected to see were tanks on the border. There was none that we could see.
I said, look, if you can prove to me that our story isn't true, we won't run it. And they just ignored it.
They have never shown those (U.S. satellite images) photos. Not then and not since."
New CIA 'Shocking' Cover-Up (October 22, 2004)
Completed in June, mandated by Congress nearly
two years ago, the CIA Report that names names
is being suppressed until after the election.
"What all the other reports on 9/11 did not do is point the finger at individuals, and give the how and what of their responsibility. This report does that," said the intelligence official. "The report found very senior-level officials responsible."
Talk about American Imperialism and Chutzpah! (October 22, 2004)
The reaction in many quarters must be 'Oh My God'. Bill, Hillary, and Tenet all seek higher office! Talk about American Imperialism and Chutzpah!
The WARLORDS of AMERICA (October 21, 2004)
Regardless of what happens on 2 November in the U.S. election, one group or another of "the Warlords of America" will be in power in Washington. And the years now immediately ahead, regardless if the President is named Kerry or Bush, are quickly shaping up as likely to be the most dangerous in modern history.
America on the Edge (October 20, 2004)
The amazing thing about this American election is that in view of what has happened in the U.S. and in the world the Democrats should be running away with it -- and yet they are struggling everywhere and likely to go down to defeat.
Israel on Road to being Pariah State (October 15, 2004)
Indeed Israeli policies and attitudes have for some time now seriously poisoned political relations throughout the Middle East, substantially helped bring about the era of the 'Clash of Civilizations', and through the powerful Israeli/Jewish lobby in Washington pushed the United States into the invasion of Iraq and other militarist isolated policies whose dangerous and destructive ramifications will be felt for many years to come
The Next Generation of Palestinians (October 13, 2004)
If what has happened in Gaza in recent years would have happened in the USA (adjusted for population size) more than 100,000 Americans would have been killed and more than a quarter million homes destroyed by a foreign occupying army using battle tanks and attack helicopters against small resistance groups in cities and towns.
AMERICAN SECRET GULAG EXPANDING (October 14, 2004)
THE CIA has greatly expanded its activities throughout the Middle East including in Jordan and Egypt as well as Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other countries throughout the region. Of course the CIA and the Mossad are working more closely together than ever to control the region and enforce what is now essentially the militarily imposed 'new world order' first announced during the current President father's days in the White House. Before President Bush I became President he was in fact the Director of the CIA, whose main headquarters is now named after him.
AOL Censors MER (October 20, 2004)
AOL -- one of the largest internet service providers -- is blocking and censoring MER. Persons who subscribe to MER using an AOL email address can not receive MER -- it is being secretly censored from their mailboxes by AOL without notice of any kind. It is believed persons working for AOL may be censoring MER in coordination with Jewish Zionist groups. It may be that AOL has a special relationship with Jewish.com and other Israeli-connected groups in some way. It is all being done in secret with no notice of any kind to either AOL users or MER.
A few of the messages we have received from AOL subscribers to MER follow:
Major Iraq Attacks on Hold Until After U.S. Vote (October 11, 2004)
The Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld made an unannounced visit to Iraq in recent days. And soon after the American election the superpower military will be much more fully unleashed throughout the country preparing to push the U.S.-appointed strong-man Iyad Allawai forward in the carefully staged 'election' that will proceed if 'conditions are right'. In other words, just as Hamid Karzai was U.S. -installed and then essentially U.S.-elected in Afghanistan, the same template is now planned for Iraq.
U.S. Forces IMF into secret Iraqi debt 'forgiveness' scheme (October 11, 2004)
But maybe most of all in the longer run, and unspoken now for all of these reasons by the powers that be, once Iraq's prior debt to other countries is 'off the books', the new U.S.-installed and CIA-controlled government in Baghdad is free to sign agreements with the Americans -- secret or otherwise -- that will essentially mortgage Iraq's future oil revenues to the U.S.A. and those it approves.
Chomsky on American Force and Pre-emption (October 10, 2004)
"Bush planners know as well as others that the
resort to force increases the threat of terror,
and that their militaristic and aggressive posture
and actions provoke reactions that increase
the risk of catastrophe."
IRAN - Targeted by U.S. and Israel (October 9, 2004)
You would think after the Iraq debacle that the ability of the U.S. to blackball, sanction, and then attack, occupy and regime-change another country would be considerable reduced. Not so however as this article in Z Magazine helps explain with regard to Iran. Indeed, soon after the American election the situation will quickly escalate.
The Debates - Fixed and Controlled (October 8, 2004)
The moderators -- both from the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) -- could have, and should have, asked hard, probing, unexpected questions like this:
Israeli AIPAC Spy Scandal - Update (October 7, 2004)
It was just a month ago that the latest Washington spy scandal involving the very heart of the Israeli-Jewish Lobby had everyone buzzing. Then it faded from view as the corporate media moved on, as CBS News which originally broke the story found itself under assault, and as the election campaign and debates took center stage. Interesting, not one question from the PBS moderators about Israeli spying, nor even about the U.S. veto of the Security Council resolution condemning Israel, nor the International Court of Justice decision doing the same. Here's an update -- however inadequate -- from yesterday's L.A.Times. Though the real heart of the story should be AIPAC and the influence, tactics, and status of the Israeli-Jewish lobby; instead they focus on just the individual and not as they should on the large group of support persons and organizations. This should especially include, of course, the current cabal of largely Jewish neocons in top positions...including the one who hired Larry Franklin (Douglas Feith), and the ones who hired him (Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle).
AOL Blocks and Censors MER Articles (October 6, 2004)
AOL is blocking and censoring MER articles because of pressures originating with Jewish and Israeli groups.
Emergency U.N. Security Council Meeting on Israel (October 4, 2004)
The Springsteen 'Vote For Change' Concerts (October 5, 2004)
"The press has let the country down. It's taken a very amoral stand, in that essential issues are often portrayed as simply one side says this and the other side says that. I think that Fox News and the Republican right have intimidated the press into an incredible self-consciousness
about appearing objective and backed them into a corner of sorts where they have ceded some of their responsibility and righteous power." - Bruce Springsteen
Israel's Peacenik - Uri Avneri: Realities (October 5, 2004)
"Uri Avneri, along with many Israelis and Jews, rightly fears that at some point Israel will be the direct target of blame for it's major contribution to having brought about such terrorism in the world and pushing the U.S.
into invading Iraq. It is an understandable fear;
for it is to a significant degree true."
Iraq is a "disaster...that will haunt the U.S. for decades" - Wall Street Journal Reporter (October 2, 2004)
Iraq is a "disaster" that has deteriorated "into a
raging barbaric guerilla war" that will haunt the
United States for decades.
The Passion of the Bush (October 2, 2004)
As the modern-day American-Israeli led Christian-Jewish crusade to remake the Middle East in the name of 'democracy and freedom' proceeds, this new documentary is telling indeed. It was first shown at the Republican Convention in New York a few weeks ago; and now, as a kind of Bush-loving counter to Fahrenhite 9/11, the DVD is being rushed out in advance of the upcoming election.
U.S. and Israel Prepare for Iran + (October 1, 2004)
Even as the two branches of the American political establishment semi-debated last night who would fight the new wars better than the other, even as U.S. and Israeli battle tanks and attack aircraft bombed and killed in Iraq and Palestine worse than ever, preparations to either force compliance or attack Iran, Syria, Hezbollah (Lebanon), Hamas (Palestine), and North Korea soon after the American election are fast proceeding at the Pentagon and the CIA.
|