Here is the flag of Persia, used prior to 1925. Note the ratio of length to height, more a banner than a flag. Note also the paler coloring.
Source, Wikipedia
Here is the flag of Iran during the time of the Pahlavi Dynasty. Note the ratio of length to height, like a modern flag, and the darker coloring.
Source, Wikipedia
Here is the modern day flag of Iran. This is the flag in use for the last 30 years.
Source, Wikipedia Also HERE
So, whose flag are they flying at the protests?
Judge for yourself. And remember, these flags were flown as part of protests that held in front of the White House, in Toronto, Irvine, on CNN and at it's Atlanta headquarter office, in Salt Lake City and on the Bellevue Washington, amongst others. There was definitely a clear impression and message being sent along.
Think! This design flag has not been used for 30 years. They are not just lying around "Flags-R-us". Somebody ordered these flags made in advance of the protests!
Singer, songwriter. Jackson was born August 29, 1958, in Gary, Indiana, to an African-American working-class family. His father, Joseph Jackson, had been a guitarist but had put aside his musical aspirations to provide for his family as a crane operator. Believing his sons had talent, he molded them into a musical group in the early 1960s. At first, the Jackson Family performers consisted of Michael’s older brothers Tito, Jermaine, and Jackie. Michael joined his siblings when he was five, and emerged as the group’s lead vocalist. He showed remarkable range and depth for such a young performer, impressing audiences with his ability to convey complex emotions. Older brother Marlon also became a member of the group, which evolved into the Jackson 5.
Michael died today, 25 June 2009 of a heart attack, he was aged 50. May his gentle soul rest in perfect bliss.
STUTTGART, Germany — A social science research center is under development at U.S. Africa Command headquarters, where researchers from the academic world are being recruited to help map the complicated human terrain on the African continent.
The research center, which falls under AFRICOM’s knowledge development division, will be designed to focus on the long-term with an eye toward forecasting potential flashpoints and preventing them from developing into conflicts.
But mixing military and social science has long been a source of controversy, going all the way back to the Vietnam era when information collected by researchers was used for targeting people.
More recently, the Army’s Human Terrain System, used in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been met with resistance from groups such as the Network of Concerned Anthropologists, made up of social scientists opposed to the mingling of academia and the military.
Though defenders of the Human Terrain System argue that social scientists are providing information to commanders that potentially can reduce levels of violence, opponents say human terrain mapping benefits the U.S. military, not local populations.
As AFRICOM sets out to recruit and build its staff of social scientists, word is beginning to spread about the latest effort, and some professors are already expressing similar concerns.
"There is a contradiction between anthropology and AFRICOM or the U.S. military," said David Hughes, an environmental anthropologist from Rutgers University’s Center for African Studies.
Hughes, who participated in an interview for a position on the AFRICOM team — a position Hughes said he was never interested in but wanted to learn more about — contends that academic researchers shouldn’t accept employment with the Defense Department.
While pursuing national security interests is the military’s objective, "Our concern is to take the concerns of the subject first and foremost. It would be difficult to negotiate that conflict," he said.
For example, researching the degree of pro or anti-American sentiment in a given area and turning over those findings to the military could open to door to selective targeting of individuals, according to Hughes.
"Then I might immediately endanger my subjects. This is the sort of thing we don’t want to be involved in and facilitate," said Hughes, whose department has issued a statement vowing that it would not collaborate with the military’s efforts in Africa.
AFRICOM officials, however, say fears about militarizing social science are misplaced. So are comparisons between AFRICOM’s research center and the Human Terrain System, which embeds academics on the battlefield to provide cultural advice to commanders in support of their missions, officials said.
"We have no combat mission in Africa," said Col. Dean Bland, who is heading up AFRICOM’s research center effort and insists the social scientists would have no role in targeting people.
Rather, the academics will fill in gaps in knowledge and help commanders craft more effective programs, he said. For example, as military training initiatives are developed, having an awareness of the ethnic mixes and traditions in a given area would be valuable information, he said. Knowing when there’s a disenfranchised minority sub-group in a region also would be valuable as the military tries to anticipate flashpoints and prevent conflict, he said.
"You have to understand how societies tick to make better decisions," Bland said.
Examining the relationship between geography and environment, culture and politics, and how these factors can come together to create instability is a new approach to intelligence-gathering, Bland said.
The research center will deal largely in the unclassified realm. The intent is to work together with other think tanks, non-governmental organizations and release reports into the public domain, Bland said. Papers will be peer-reviewed and the work will be available for others working on the continent, he said.
Despite some early criticism in academia, recruiting hasn’t been a problem, Bland said.
Currently, about a dozen staffers are on board. Within six months, the knowledge development team is expected to be fully manned with 25 to 30 members. The majority will be based in Stuttgart. A team of about six people will be stationed at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti, where they will work closely with AFRICOM’s Combined Joined Task Force-Horn of Africa.
At times, the Germany-based members could deploy to the continent for short research missions.
The need for a research center, Bland said, boils down to the fact that there’s a lot the military doesn’t know regarding Africa — a continent of 53 countries, hundreds of languages, tribes and cultures.
Indeed, Africa is a place Americans generally know little about and tend to regard as one big country instead of a diverse continent of nearly one billion people, AFRICOM officials say.
Could AFRICOM’s social scientists help leaders anticipate events, such as the violence that followed last year’s elections in Kenya? Could they advise commanders on the potential destabilizing effects of global warming and desertification in certain regions? Could the next genocide be prevented?
That’s the goal, though measuring effectiveness will be difficult, Bland said.
"We’ll never know if we are successful, because if we do our job right, flashpoints will go away," Bland said.
DATELINE: Abuja. The Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s administration in Nigeria might have finally decided to take the bulls by the horn by deciding to acquire nuclear capabilities for various peaceful purposes, especially for the nation’s intractable power sector.
Zumarockreports.com has been reliably informed by inside sources at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that President Yar’Adua and President Dimitri Medvedev of Russia will in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, on June 24, initial an agreement for the provision of nuclear technology to Nigeria.
President Medvedev who will be in Nigeria as part of an African business trip is expected to arrive here with about 300 prospective investors on his entourage will also initial other agreements with Nigerian officials.
A formal hint to Nigeria’s decision to acquire nuclear technology was dropped by the Minister of National Planning, Shamsudeen Usman, last week when he announced that Nigeria and 16 other African countries may soon start power generation from nuclear plants, under a power base diversification program being backed by the Austria-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), adding that already IAEA has organized a regional training program for personnel from countries participating in the project.
President Medvedev’s historic visit to Nigeria will be the first time a Russian head of state would be visiting Africa. The trip will also take him to Angola, Namibia and Egypt. Informed sources have told our correspondent that apart from the nuclear deal, another important reason for the Russian leader’s visit would be to seal agreements for the Russian involvement in Nigeria’s gas and petroleum sector through its giant Gazprom, which, as is being speculated may replace Royal Dutch Shell in Nigeria.
Nigeria may have decided to terminate its contract with the Anglo-Dutch company for the development of an oil and gas deposit in the Ogoniland region of the Niger Delta, even after the company has made a huge pay-out to the Ogoni people for years of environmental degradation suffered by the communities.
Zumarockreports.com also learnt that Shell abandoned the fields, which hold proven reserves of over 10 trillion cubic meters (353 trillion cubic feet) of gas, 15 years ago after its relations with the Ogoni people reached its nadir, to the extent that Ogonis vowed to ensure that Shell never sets its feet on Ogoniland.
A hint to the possible involvement of the Russian energy giant, Gazprom in Nigeria’s booming energy sector was dropped about one year ago in South Africa by President Yar’Adua himself when he announced that, "by the end of the year another oil operator will take over Shell Petroleum interests in Ogoniland."
Earlier this year, Gazprom had confirmed negotiating a seven-billion dollar contract for offshore gas exploration with the Nigerian government. Earlier this month, Gazprom chief executive Alexei Miller, who will be on Medvedev’s delegation to Africa had met with the group managing director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and Tanimu Yakubu, the chief economic adviser to the president, to discuss the details of the cooperation.
Look what they are doing to our world, that we may become zombies!
With the discovery of vaccines to eradicate polio, smallpox, diptheria, and other killers, and, the discovery of potent antibiotics, the last 50 years of the 20th Century heralded a hope for conquering disease by the 21st Century. In the 1980's it was obvious that we would not conquer disease when we were challenged with the discovery of HIV and HCV. The 1990's brought us the realization that our antibiotics would not be a panacea. Diseases formerly controlled by antibiotics were becoming resistant to the drugs. Diseases like TB were making a comeback and with a vengence. Our climate is changing rapidly, and with this change, we are seeing emerging and re-emergiing diseases not endemic to the particular areas of outbreak.
Fall 1999, New York area experienced just such an event. A non endemic disease broke out in a "hot zone" in Northern Queens. Was this altered strain a result of climate change or did it emerge from a Lab, Plum Island, Yale, or some other lab? Plum Island is located less then 2 miles from the Eastern shore of Long Island, Orient Pt. It is less then 13 miles across Long Island Sound from our Submarine base at Groton, Ct. (Pathogens deemed too dangerous to enter via JFK, are brought via submarine and transferred to a Govt. Ferry to Plum Island. Plum Island is a biolevel 5 facility. In 1996 SUNY Stoney Brook had been considering joint experiments with Plum Island, using the biolevel 4 lab at Plum Island. Why then do we hear in the press, that Plum Island is seeking funds to upgrade from level 3 to a level 4 facility? This request to "upgrade" to "bogus" level 4 came on the heels of the West Nile like outbreak. March 1999 and also. during the summer there were a sequence of power outages. Some background on Plum is needed. March 1999, Plum island installed an undersea fiberoptic cable. During the finalization of the cable, by STV Inc. all power to Plum Island was lost. Plum Island needs power to maintain biocontainment. Plum Island has had a horrific safety violation record and has been cited by the EPA as late as Spring 1999. In March 1999, the (now previous) Director, Alfonso Torres, gave his resignation. A new Director, Dr. LeeAnn Thomas, took over in July of 1999. Some of the attached links prove that Plum is not a biolevel 3, but it is a biolevel 5 faciliity, one of only a few worldwide. According to Dr. Alfonso Torres and also Dr. Kiley of Plum Island, Plum Island is the only biolevel 5 facility in the US. Why would Plum Island seek the bogus level 4 upgrade after the outbreak of the WNV? I do not have that answer. It is theorized that Plum island needs funds just to maintain its present biocontainment. (according to Dr. Kiley 1998 meeting USAHA Committee on Government Relations.) Plum Island had been working with Japanese Encephalitis since the early 1990's. Plum Island/Yale Scientists had even tested JE vaccine on HUMAN VOLUNTEERS. Background: 1978 bioaccident. FMD microbes escaped. Workers were evacuated in paper coveralls, lab animals were incinerated and the island was sprayed with toxic chemicals. I have corresponded with a person who lived near Plum Island at that time, and claims to have contracted Foot and Mouth Disease, as was the case with other children at that time. Was this same toxic spraying done March 1999 and other times when the power was out? http://www.nalusda.gov/ttic/tektran/data/000009/05/0000090536.html Yes, Plum Island has been working with JE as the above link proves. Why would an animal facility test JE vaccine on HUMAN VOLUNTEERS? There has been a loss of the lobster population in Long Island Sound, Fall 1999. Did installation of the STV Inc. Cable cause the hazardous waste that Plum Island was cited for illegally dumping in 1998 to be drudged up? Did this or toxic chemical spraying of the island cause the algal bloom to become toxic and thereby cause the killoff? Why did the Mayor of the City of New York, OVER REACT, and spray deadly Malathion when he learned of 3 deaths of elderly people. He did not follow legal steps to obtain a permit for the spraying. History of Plum Island: In 1954 Ft. Terry, a biowar research facility closed its doors on that scruffy island. It handed over to the new lab, 134 strains of 13 viruses collected from every Continent of the World. At that time, the prime directive of Plum Island, was to find an efficient manner to infect Soviet Livestock. In 1969, President Nixon OFFICIALLY ended the biowar research program. Plum Island, officially, became an Animal Foreign Disease diagnostic facility. The advent of the 21st Century has the world in fear of bioterrorism. Bioweapons are cheaply fabricated, easy to carry and undetectable. Countries unable to fund expensive defense programs are able to put together an arsenol of bioweapons. Individual terrorists are able to strike fear into the hearts and souls of Nations at just the mention of a bioweapon threat. In 1993, after a 10 year hiatus, Dugway Proving Ground began bioresearch. In 1983, after a bioaccident which resulted in the anthrax death of sheep in neighboring pastures, Dugway had ended its biowar research. Now, 10 years later, in the name of biowar DEFENSE, Dugway opened for business without any opposition. Dugway is testing BIDS (BioIntegrated Defense System). At first the tests were conducted in liquid with "designer" simulants anthrax, bottulism, plague and smallpox etal. Now, testing of the defensive weapon is aerosol. The pathogens are (synthetic, a type of "designer" pathogen) deemed no more harmful then bacteria found in dirt. Only time will tell, I guess. Now, for a PLUM ISLAND UPDATE I now know why Plum Island is a biolevel 5 facility. In 1970, just one year after President Nixon officially ended our offensive biowar research, Plum Island was granted 10 million dollars by the Federal Govt. The purpose of the grant was to research the use of mycoplasma for use in germ warfare. The original 10 million dollar grant was for a 5 year period. In 1975, the funding was continued as the mycoplasma research was deemed very successful. In the 1980's a young scientist had just completed his graduate research at Cornell. He was hired by Plum Island to head up the mycoplasma research project. This scientist was Dr. Jawad Al Aubaidi. When it was obvious that hostilities would break out in the Persian Gulf, he went back home to his native Iraq, where he headed up the mycoplasma research at the Univ. of Bagdad. I have recently received a letter from Dr. Aubaidi's professor at Cornell, Dr. Carmichael. Dr. Carmichael pointed out that Dr. Aubaidi was a brilliant young researcher and a very nice person. He also sent me a medline reference sheet for me to look up Dr. Aubaidi's research prior to and while at Cornell. I am still trying to figure out how Dr. Carmichael was able to locate my mailing address. I had applied to the National Archives, under FOIA, for information on Ft. Terry, Plum Island, and information about Dr. Aubaidi and the circumstances of his untimely death. I received a letter from the NSA dated June 5, 2000 regarding my FOIA request. They informed me that the circumstances of the death of Dr. Jawad Al-Aubaidi, and information on his research is classified in accordance with Executive Order 12958. My request for information was therefore denied. They further went on to state that such information would involve breaching National Security and Foreign Relations. According to Prof. Garth Nicolson, Dr. Aubaidi was murdered by the Israelis. Yet, according to Dr. Carmichael, Dr. Aubaidi was hit by a truck when fixing a flat tire. Dr. Carmichael said that according to Dr. Aubaidi's wife, the flat tire and subsequent "Accident" was arranged by agents of Sadam. Were the Iraqis responsible for his death? According to Cornell Univ. Dr. L. E. Carmichael, Dr. Aubaidi and his family were planning to move back to the US. At the time of Dr. Aubaidi's death, Dr. Carmichael states that Dr. Aubaidi's planned move back to the US was to take place a week after Dr. Aubaidi's accident. According to Dr. Carmichael, Dr. Aubaidi deserves better. I therefore, am very interested in finding out exactly why Dr. Jawad Al Aubaidi was murdered in such a manner.
I could never understand how the US and the Pentegon could insist that biological agents were not used in the Persian Gulf. There was NO MONITORING FOR BIOLOGICALS in place during the Gulf War. There was only LIMITED Chemical weapon monitoring. The BIDS moniitoring technology was not in place at that time. It only commenced in 1993. According to accurate and verified accounts, Sadam Hussein purchased mycoplasma as well as other biologicals, which included West Nile Virus, from the US right up to 2 weeks before Desert Storm. I have further discovered that Plum Island had projects in which "clean" ticks were infected with brucella. They also had a project infecting ticks with African Swine Fever. Plum Island Scientists, Dr. Fred Brown and former Plum Island Director, Alfonso Torres have been working with BSE and other Prion diseases. It is my contention that the disease we now call Lyme Disease, originated in a lab at Plum Island. The funding for research would be covered in the Mycoplasma grant. The very first case of Lyme Disease was isolated in a youth, in 1975, within a few miles of the dock where the Plum Island Government Ferry boat lands on the Connecticut side of Long Island Sound. I have heard that a young Connecticut girl who had received yet, not responded to all known treatments for Lyme Disease, and who was dying, was sent to the inhouse isolation ward at Plum Island and "emerged" from that Animal Facility, totally CURED OF LYME DISEASE. When I first began the investigation into Plum Island and its connection to the New York outbreak of Kunjin/West Nile-like disease, I never imagined that Plum island would be so immersed in biowar projects. In any event, I now know why it was designated a biolevel 5 facility. At the time, 1970, it was illegal to work with mycoplasma in the Continental US. As Plum island was and is a top secret biowar facility, and it is an island, it was designated biolevel 5 and given the funding to proceed with mycoplasma research. So, indeed, Plum Island is a biolevel 5 facility.
August 30,2001 Plum Island Update
The Plum Island upgrade to biolevel 4 has not occurred as of this writing. There is now a citizen watchdog group overseeing the upgrade and the activities at Plum Island. It was my hope that the committee would monitor Plum Island and there would be safeguards in place. I have recently learned that Plum Island IS doing research on Nipah virus. Nipah virus, in the paramyxovirus group along with Hendra virus is a biolevel 4 pathogen. In other words, labs working with this virus mandate a biolevel 4 designation. This designation is required because Nipah is zoonotic, jumping species barrier from animal to man, and, has no cure or preventive vaccine. So, why is a lab who claims to be only a biolevel 3 and not a level 5, working on a biolevel 4 pathogen? Is the fact that they are an island status and a biolevel 5 a factor in their working on Nipah? How many other biolevel 4 pathogens are being studied at Plum Island? Remember, Plum Island is less then 2 miles from Long Island's coast. Birds and probably bats fly to and from the island. Nipah is a virus that is vectored by bats. It joins Hendra, another paramyxovirus and Tioman, also paramyxovirus, as a bat vectored virus. Although it is in the paramyxovirus family, Nipah and Hendra, and Tioman are in a separate group. I wrote to Dr. Daniel Rock who heads the Nipah research unit and, as of this writing, have not had a response to my mail. I am wondering where the watch dog group is and why are they not monitoring the Nipah research. I hope that we can get a response from Plum Island regarding their Nipah research in a biolevel 3 lab. According to APHIS/ARS, Plum Island needs funds to upgrade the facility JUST TO MAINTAIN ITS BIOLEVEL 3 DESIGNATION. This is the same facility that is working on a biolevel 4 pathogen?
AJV states that it “recognizes the powerful role of U.S. policy in the region and believes that the United States’ unconditional support of Israeli government policy is profoundly harmful to the cause of peace with justice. We will work to promote a U.S. policy that is consistent with international law and human rights. We will work to combat the myth of American Jewish consensus in support of Israeli government policy.”~~Another Jewish Voice
"You must be celebrating,” the interviewer from a popular radio station told me after Netanyahu’s speech. “After all, he is accepting the plan which you proposed 42 years ago!” (Actually it was 60 years ago, but who is counting?)
The front page of Haaretz carried an article by Gideon Levy, in which he wrote that “the courageous call of Uri Avnery and his friends four decades ago is now being echoed, though feebly, from end to end (of the Israeli political spectrum).”
I would be lying if I denied feeling a brief glow of satisfaction, but it faded quickly. This was no “historic” speech, not even a “great” speech. It was a clever speech.
It contained some sanctimonious verbiage to appease Barack Obama, followed right away by the opposite, to pacify the Israeli extreme right. Not much more.
* * *
NETANYAHU DECLARED that “our hand is extended for peace.”
In my ears, that rang a bell: in the 1956 Sinai war, a member of my editorial staff was attached to the brigade that conquered Sharm-al-Sheikh. Since he had grown up in Egypt, he interviewed the senior captured Egyptian officer, a colonel. “Every time David Ben-Gurion announced that his hand was stretched out for peace,” the Egyptian told him, “we were put on high alert.”
And indeed, that was Ben-Gurion’s method. Before every provocation he would declare that “our hands are extended for peace”, adding conditions that he knew were totally unacceptable to the other side. Thus an ideal situation (for him) was created: The world saw Israel as a peace-loving country, while the Arabs looked like serial peace-killers. Our secret weapon is the Arab refusal, it used to be joked in Jerusalem at the time.
This week, Netanyahu wheeled out the same old trick.
* * *
I DO NOT underrate, of course, the significance of the chief of the Likud uttering the two words: “Palestinian state”.
Words carry political weight. Once released into the world, they have a life of their own. Unlike dogs, they cannot be called back.
In a popular Israeli love song, the boy asks the girl: “When you say no, what do you mean?” One could well ask: When Netanyahu says yes, what does he mean?
But even if the words “Palestinian state” passed his lips only under duress, and when Netanyahu has no intention at all of turning them into reality, it is still important that the head of the government and the chief of the Likud was compelled to utter them. The idea of the Palestinian state has now become a part of the national consensus, and only a handful of ultra-rightists reject it directly. But this is only the beginning. The main struggle will be about turning the idea into reality.
* * *
THE ENTIRE speech was addressed to one single person: Barack Obama. It was not designed to appeal to the Palestinians. It was quite clear that the Palestinians are only the passive object of a discussion between the President of the USA and the Prime Minister of Israel. Except in some tired old clichés, Netanyahu spoke about them, not to them.
He is ready, so he says, to conduct negotiations with the “Palestinian community”, and that, of course, “without preconditions”. Meaning: without Palestinian preconditions. On Netanyahu’s part, there are plenty of preconditions, every one of which is designed to make certain that no Palestinian, no Arab and indeed no Muslim will agree to enter negotiations.
Condition 1: The Arabs have to recognize Israel as “the nation-state of the Jewish people” (and not just “a Jewish state”, as many in the media erroneously reported.) As Hosny Mubarak has already answered: No Arab will accept this, because it would mean that 1.5 million Arab citizens of Israel are cut off from the state, and because it would deny in advance the Right of Return of the Palestinian refugees - the main bargaining chip of the Arab side.
It should be remembered that when the United Nations resolved in 1947 to partition Palestine between a “Jewish state” and an “Arab state”, they did not mean to define the character of the states. They were just stating facts: there are two mutually hostile populations in the country, and therefore the country has to be divided between them. (Anyhow, 40% of the population of the “Jewish” state was to consist of Arabs.)
Condition 2: The Palestinian Authority must first of all establish its rule over the Gaza Strip. How? After all, the Israeli government prevents travel between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and no Palestinian force can pass from one to the other. And the solution of the problem by establishing a Palestinian unity government is also ruled out: Netanyahu flatly declared that there would be no negotiations with a Palestinian leadership that includes “terrorists who want to annihilate us” – his way of referring to Hamas.
Condition 3: The Palestinian state will be demilitarized. This is not a new idea. All peace plans that have been put forward up to now speak about security arrangements that would protect Israel from Palestinian attacks and Palestine from Israeli attacks. But that is not what Netanyahu has in mind: he did not speak about mutuality, but about domination. Israel would control the air space and the border crossings of the Palestinian state, turning it into a kind of giant Gaza Strip. Also, Netanyahu’s style was deliberately overbearing and humiliating: he obviously hopes that the word ‘demilitarized” would be enough to get the Palestinians to say “no”.
Condition 4: Undivided Jerusalem will remain under Israeli rule. This was not proposed as an opening gambit for negotiations but presented as a final decision. That by itself ensures that no Palestinian, nor any Arab or even any Muslim, could accept the proposal.
In the Oslo Agreement, Israel undertook to negotiate about the future of Jerusalem. It is an accepted legal rule that if one undertakes to negotiate, one accepts to do so bona fide, on the basis of give and take. Therefore, all peace plans provide that East Jerusalem - wholly or partly – will be returned to Arab rule.
Condition 5: Between Israel and the Palestinian state there will be “defensible borders”. These are code-words for extensive annexations by Israel. Their meaning: no return to the 1967 borders, not even with a swap of territory that would allow for some of the large settlements to be joined to Israel. In order to create “defensible borders”, a major part of the occupied Palestinian territories (which altogether make up just 22% of pre-1948 Palestine) will be absorbed into Israel.
Condition 6: The refugee problem will be solved “outside the territory of Israel”. Meaning: not a single refugee will be allowed to return. True, all realistic people agree that there can be no return of millions of refugees. According to the Arab peace initiative, the solution must be “mutually agreed” – which means that Israel has to agree to any solution. The assumption is that the two parties will agree on the return of a symbolic number. This is a highly charged and sensitive matter, which must be treated with prudence and the utmost sensitivity. Netanyahu does the opposite: his provocative statement, devoid of all empathy, is clearly designed to bring about an automatic refusal.
Condition 7: No settlement freeze. The “normal life” of the settlers will continue. Meaning: the building activity for the “natural increase” will go on. This illustrates the saying of Michael Tarazy, a legal advisor to the PLO: “We are negotiating about sharing a pizza, and in the meantime Israel is eating it.”
All this was in the speech. No less interesting is what was not in it. For example, the words: Road Map. Annapolis. Palestine. The Arab peace plan. Occupation. Palestinian Sovereignty. Opening of the Gaza Strip border crossings. Golan Heights. And, even more important: there was not a hint of respect for the enemy who must be turned into a friend, in the words of the ancient Jewish saying.
By Uri Avnery
Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom.
After hiding out for about 8 months, in order to evade an arrest warrant for crimes against humanity, issued by the International Criminal Court, George W. Bush has finally been found hiding out in the Pakistani mountains with his old buddy, Osama bin Laden.
He has already been tried in absentia and found guilty of multiple crimes and for causing the Iraqi Holocaust and will be hanged once his appeals run out.
Former VP Dick Cheney who has gone through his 5th heart transplant and who has shot three more of his buddies in hunting “accidents” and who has told President Obama to “f*ck off” for the tenth time, decided to volunteer for the US Army in order to make up for draft dodging during the Vietnam War. The Army might take him up on the offer and use him as a bayonet dummy during basic training.
Donald Rumsfeld, extremely depressed in not being able to get buses to stop and pick him up during his commute in Washington DC, died of an overdose of drugs. Not officially verified yet, but rumors are that he ingested a bucket full of aspartame and injected himself with large quantities of Tamiflu, his bird flu pandemic vaccine.
Condi Rice has gone through her third wife while teaching at Stanford. She had two children in her last two marriages with Randy Bean and Dick Cheney’s daughter Mary Cheney, who had divorced her first wife. She also had the tenth oil tanker named after her by a Saudi Arabian firm.
It was a “shocking” day when Alberto Gonzales, George Bush’s personal lawyer, was found tied to a cross with a black hood covering his body and attached to live electric wires.
The newly re-elected President Obama has undone about 20% of the unconstitutional laws passed during the 8 years of “George Bush’s Dictatorship” as the time is now called since it was proven in court that both of his elections were stolen.
Let's connect some dots today, boys and girls to learn about the HIGHEST POSSIBLE TREASON that has happened in this country.
THIS IS AS REAL AND AS UGLY AS IT CAN GET.
Dot #1 China begins its covert war on the FREE American republic in the 1950's by taking over much of the PHARMACEUTICAL DRUG manufacturing for American and British Big Pharma. This is an outgrowth of the Rothschild's OPIUM RING PROCESSING by the British West Indies company during the 1800's, and is brokered by the "City of London" and Washington D.C.
Dot #2 Arch-illuminist and satanist Henry Kissinger "normalizes" trade relations with China during the Nixon years.
Dot #3 Eventual LDS (Mormon) Church President Gordon B. Hinckley, via the church-owned Polynesian Cultural Center in Hawaii, establishes a "hard currency" pipeline with Bejing, exchanging bank "trade credits" for CIA/BRITISH MI6 DRUG SERVICES RENDERED into hard GOLD AND SILVER while hiding behind the cloak of "World Religion". This is facilitated via the LDS-Church built and controlled "Shenzhen Special Economic Zone" adjacent to Hong Kong. When Hinckley is made LDS President, his first "official" visit as "World Prophet" is to China, where the Chinese Communist leaders give him a hero's welcome and a confetti parade. (See attached paper --- "Pensees of a Puzzled Pilgrim" pp 5-6 and Desert News, June 1, 1996 article: "President Hinckley Visits China").
Dot #4 Arkansas natives Bill Clinton and Sam Walton massively increase contracts with China's factories over 2,000%. This results in a tremendous imbalance of trade with China. Thanks to the Mormon "Special Economic Zone" -- China's communist leaders begin amassing incredible "real" wealth in gold and silver.
Dot #5 China purchases TRILLIONS of dollars worth of U.S. Treasury Bills and Bonds, paying for it with gold and silver provided by the Shenzhen Economic Zone exchanges. Much of the U.S. "national debt" is purchased from the private "Federal Reserve" banks in this manner.
Dot #6 Dr. Jeff Taubenberger of the U.S. Institute of Pathology in Ft. Dedrick MD, (The world headquarters for biologic weapons development) successfully maps the genome of the 1918 killer "flu" virus responsible for the 1918 "pandemic" that killed millions. The worst killer virus ever to plague mankind is now ready to be used as a covert "weapon" disguised as a natural "influenza" mutations.
Dot #6 July, 2005: The Illuminati-conrolled United Nations announces that the world is long over-due for an "influenza pandemic". The H5N1 "Avian Flu" is wrongfully demonized as a COVER.
Dot #7 December 2005: The Chinese Defense Minister, Chi Haotiaon delivers a speech to the Chinese military leaders outlining the inevitable "expansion" of China into Canada, the U.S., and Australia -- He justifies this because of Chinese racial "superiority" and thus "emminent domain". To accomplish this, American would first have to be "Cleansed" by means of a powerful "biological weapon" --- causing 150 -200 MILLION AMERICAN DEATHS!!! The plan would be enacted AFTER the symbolic OLYMPIC GAMES beginning at the sacred day of 8-08-08 are concluded. China begins buying oil and gas futures, spiking the worldwide prices to historic levels.
Dot #8 March 13, 2008: A secret meeting is conducted for the U.S. House and Senate. Agents of the Club of Rome give a preview of upcoming events to elected officials who first swear an oath of secrecy. The traitors are briefed that the economy will begin its collapse in October, 2008 -- and will TOTALLY collapse in mid 2009. As events unfold in 2009-2010, Congress was told of the real possibily of massive civil unrest and even Civil War being waged. Detention camps constructed to imprison civil 'agitators'. See http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/34877 for the complete meeting agenda.
Dot #9 In September, 2008 -- as soon as the Olympics are concluded, China stops buying oil and gas futures while dumping U.S. Treasury bills and bonds. Gasoline prices plummet, while the U.S. mortgage loan money becomes tightly constricted. The Club of Rome's agenda is being implemented perfectly.
Dot #10 In October, just as explained in March, the economy indeed begins its collapse with mortgage banks going bankrupt as the Chinese dump their U.S. Securities. This causes a world-wide "rush to liquidity" as money supplies DRASTICALLY tighten.
Dot #11 Billions of worthless U.S. Government "bailout" debit entries are given to bolster failing U.S. Banks. These are "worthless" because China now controls most of the U.S. "REAL" wealth in the form of gold and silver. China refuses to continue investing credit loans to the U.S. Treasury.
Dot #12 Barack Hussein Obama is elected, promising "Change you can believe in." After taking office in January, Obama sends Hillary Clinton on a critical mission to China and helps write H.R. 45 -- a complete grab of America's guns ala Adolph Hitler. State leaders who understand what Clinton and Obama agenda with China is about, are seeking legal "Sovereignty" to prevent the loss of property to a foreign power.
Dot #13 China agrees to continue investing in U.S. Treasury Bills only after securing the right of "eminent domain" to physically repossess foreclosed American PRIVATE PROPERTY. This move is the equivalent of an unconditional surrender following a bloody war. This also gives the Chinese military the LEGAL RIGHT to use biological weaponry to "Clean up America all at once". It gives them the legal right to use deadly force in removing trespassing Americans from occupying Chinese real estate.
Connect these 13 evil dots, and this is what you get:
FEDS GRANT EMINENT DOMAIN AS COLLATERAL TO CHINA FOR U.S. DEBTS
BEIJING, China -- Sources at the United States Embassy in Beijing China have just CONFIRMED that the United States of America has tendered to China a written agreement which grants to the People's Republic of China, an option to exercise Eminent Domain within the USA, as collateral for China's continued purchase of US Treasury Notes and existing US Currency reserves.
The written agreement was brought to Beijing by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and was formalized and agreed-to during her recent trip to China.
This means that in the event the US Government defaults on its financial obligations to China, the Communist Government of China would be permitted to physically take -- inside the USA -- land, buildings, factories, perhaps even entire cities - to satisfy the financial obligations of the US government.
Put simply, the feds have now actually mortgaged the physical land and property of all citizens and businesses in the United States. They have given to a foreign power, their Constitutional power to "take" all of our property, as actual collateral for continued Chinese funding of US deficit spending and the continued carrying of US national debt.
This is an unimaginable betrayal of every man, woman and child in the USA. An outrage worthy of violent overthrow.
-------------- UPDATE 1:40 pm EST
Eminent Domain is the power of government to TAKE private property for public use without the consent of the property owner. Under our Constitution, the government can only "take" when providing "just compensation" for what they've taken.
Who decides what constitutes "just compensation?" The government!
Homeowners who felt the government was not paying them enough for property in past "takings" have filed lawsuits. In absolutely every such case, the value placed upon the property by the government was upheld by the courts.
Our federal government has now granted to China, this power to "take"our homes and businesses in the event the US Gov't defaults on its debts. Let's play this out as a worst case scenario. . . .
The US Gov't goes belly-up and China comes in and says, "they owed us $2 Trillion in Treasury Notes and another $2 Trillion in actual cash money which is now worthless. We are taking the entire state of Hawaii and the entire state of California in lieu of this bad debt. "
With the stroke of a Chinese chop stick, Hawaii and California -- all the land and buildings in those states -- are now owned by China.
The "taking" would be a "valid public use" because it was "taken" in payment of the public debt!!!!
China could then turn around and declare the value of all that land to be worth. . . . . I dunno, ten cents on a dollar?
For your $200,000 house, you get a Chinese check for $20,000.
Needless to say, the property owners would go ballistic and demand "just compensation" for what was taken. Who gets to decide what is "just?" China! Don't think you got a fair price for what they took? No problem, sue China.
You'll lose.
People who live in those states and own their land outright, might be able to negotiate with China to "rent" back their own property, as long as the property owner continued to pay all his taxes; but the land and buildings would belong to China.
This is what our own Government has just done to us and it is the single most vile act of betrayal in the history of human existence.
------------- SECOND UPDATE 3:48 PM
In early February nine U.S. States began the process of re- asserting their Sovereignty pursuant to the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the US Constitution; declaring null and void any actions by Congress that violated the Constitution.
The states took action to make certain the feds couldn't give away cities or the states themselves!
This situation is going to get VERY ugly, VERY fast as one sovereign power (the feds) try to literally give away the land of other sovereign powers, (the states). This is the type of thing that starts Civil War.
Our present federal government makes the treachery and betrayal of Benedict Arnold look like child's play.
After Donald Rumsfeld testified on the Hill about Abu Ghraib in May, there was talk of more photos and video in the Pentagon's custody more horrific than anything made public so far. "If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse," Rumsfeld said. Since then, the Washington Post has disclosed some new details and images of abuse at the prison. But if Seymour Hersh is right, it all gets much worse.
Hersh gave a speech last week to the ACLU making the charge that children were sodomized in front of women in the prison, and the Pentagon has tape of it. The speech was first reported in a New York Sun story last week, which was in turn posted on Jim Romenesko's media blog, and now EdCone.com and other blogs are linking to the video. We transcribed the critical section here (it starts at about 1:31:00 into the ACLU video.) At the start of the transcript here, you can see how Hersh was struggling over what he should say:
"Debating about it, ummm ... Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."
"It's impossible to say to yourself how did we get there? Who are we? Who are these people that sent us there? When I did My Lai I was very troubled like anybody in his right mind would be about what happened. I ended up in something I wrote saying in the end I said that the people who did the killing were as much victims as the people they killed because of the scars they had, I can tell you some of the personal stories by some of the people who were in these units witnessed this. I can also tell you written complaints were made to the highest officers and so we're dealing with a enormous massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there and higher, and we have to get to it and we will. We will. You know there's enough out there, they can't (Applause). .... So it's going to be an interesting election year."
Notes from a similar speech Hersh gave in Chicago in June were posted on Brad DeLong's blog. Rick Pearlstein, who watched the speech, wrote: "[Hersh] said that after he broke Abu Ghraib people are coming out of the woodwork to tell him this stuff. He said he had seen all the Abu Ghraib pictures. He said, 'You haven't begun to see evil...' then trailed off. He said, 'horrible things done to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run.' He looked frightened."
So, there are several questions here: Has Hersh actually seen the video he described to the ACLU, and why hasn't he written about it yet? Will he be forced to elaborate in more public venues now that these two speeches are getting so much attention, at least in the blogosphere? And who else has seen the video, if it exists -- will journalists see and report on it? did senators see these images when they had their closed-door sessions with the Abu Ghraib evidence? -- and what is being done about it?
(Update: A reader brought to our attention that the rape of boys at Abu Ghraib has been mentioned in some news accounts of the prisoner abuse evidence. The Telegraph and other news organizations described "a videotape, apparently made by US personnel, is said to show Iraqi guards raping young boys." The Guardian reported "formal statements by inmates published yesterday describe horrific treatment at the hands of guards, including the rape of a teenage Iraqi boy by an army translator.")
LONDON (Reuters) - Gamers beware: Keeping too tight a grip on the console and furiously pushing the buttons can cause a newly identified skin disorder marked by painful lumps on the palms, Swiss scientists said Tuesday.
Called "PlayStation palmar hidradentitis" by the scientists, the skin disorder can cause painful lesions on the palms similar to patches found on the soles of children's feet after taking part in heavy physical activity, they said.
"The tight and continuous grasping of the hand-grips together with repeated pushing of the buttons produce minor but continuous trauma to the (palm) surfaces," Vincent Piguet and colleagues at University Hospitals and Medical School of Geneva reported in the British Journal of Dermatology.
A spokesman for Sony Corp, which makes the PlayStation, noted the study involved one person and said the company had sold hundreds of millions of the consoles since the product was introduced in 1995.
"As with any leisure pursuit there are possible consequences of not following common sense, health advice and guidelines, as can be found within our instruction manuals," Sony spokesman David Wilson said.
"We would not wish to belittle this research and we will study the findings with interest, but this is the first time we have ever heard of a complaint of this nature."
Excessive gaming is already seen as a public health issue, sparking addictive behavior that can lead to a range of psychological problems, the researchers said.
Other researchers have identified acute tendonitis from playing too much of Nintendo Co Ltd's Wii, and now a disorder related to the PlayStation can be added to the list, the team said.
Their study described the case of a 12-year-old girl who attended the Geneva hospital with intensely painful lesions on her hands, which she had developed four weeks earlier. She had no other lesions anywhere else on her body.
After questioning, the doctors discovered that several days prior to the appearance of the lesions the girl had started to play a game on her PlayStation for several hours each day.
The researchers suspected that grasping the console's hand-grips together with repeated pushing of the buttons produced minor but prolonged injury to the palm of the girl's hands, which can be made worse by sweating during a tense game.
The doctors recommended the girl stop playing and she recovered fully after 10 days, the researchers said.
"If you're worried about soreness on your hands when playing a games console, it might be sensible to give your hands a break from time to time, and don't play excessively if your hands are prone to sweating," Nina Goad of the British Association of Dermatologists said in a statement.
It was as if they had stepped on a mine, but there was no shrapnel in the wound. Some had lost their legs. It looked as though they had been sliced off. I have been to war zones for 30 years, but I have never seen such injuries before.
—Dr. Erik Fosse, Norwegian cardiologist who
worked in Gaza hospitals during the recent war.
What Dr. Fosse was describing was the effects of a U.S. “focused lethality” weapon that minimalizes explosive damage to structures while inflicting catastrophic wounds on its victims. While the weapon has been used in Iraq, Gaza was the first test of the bomb in a densely populated environment.
The specific weapon—the GBU-39—is a Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME) and was developed by the U.S. Air Force, Boeing Corporation, and University of California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 2000. The weapon wraps the high explosives HMX or RDX with a tungsten alloy and other metals like cobalt, nickel or iron, in a carbon fiber/epoxy container. When the bomb explodes, the container evaporates and the tungsten turns into micro-shrapnel that is extremely lethal up to about 60 feet.
Tungsten is inert, so it does not react chemically with the explosive. While a non-inert metal like aluminum would increase the blast, tungsten actually limits the explosion.
Within the weapon’s range, however, it is inordinately lethal. According to Norwegian doctor Mad Gilbert, the blast results in multiple amputations and “very severe fractures. The muscles are sort of split from the bones, hanging loose, and you also have quite severe burns.”
Those who survive the initial blast quickly succumb to septicemia and organ collapse. “Initially, everything seems in order … but it turns out on operation that dozens of miniature particles can be found in all their organs,” says Dr. Jam Brommundt, a German doctor working in Kham Younis, a city in southern Gaza. “It seems to be some sort of explosive or shell that disperses tiny particles … that penetrate all organs, these miniature injuries, you are not able to attack them surgically.” According to Brommundt, the particles cause multiple organ failures.
If, by some miracle, victims do survive, they are almost to certain develop rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS), a particularly deadly cancer that deeply embeds itself into tissue and is almost impossible to treat. A 2005 U.S. Department of health study found that tungsten stimulated RMS cancers even in very low doses. Out of 92 rats tested, 92 developed the cancer.
While DIMEs were originally designed to avoid “collateral” damage generated by standard high explosive bombs, the weapon’s lethality and profound long-term toxicity hardly seems like an improvement. And in Gaza, the ordinance was widely used. Al-Shifta alone has seen 100 to 150 such patients.
Was Gaza a test of DIME in urban conditions?
Dr. Gilbert told the Oslo Gardermoen,“There is a strong suspicion I think that Gaza is now being used as a test laboratory for new weapons.”
The characteristics of the GBU-39 are likely to make it a go-to weapon in the future. The bomb is small and light—less than six feet long and only 285 pounds—that means an aircraft can carry four times as many weapons. It can also be dropped 60 miles from its target. Internal wings allow the bomb to navigate to its target. It can penetrate three feet of reinforced concrete. It can also be mounted on drones, like the Predator and the Reaper, and compared to other weapons systems, is a bargain.”
Marc Garlasco, Human Rights Watch’s senior military advisor, says “It remains to be seen how Israel has acquired the technology, whether they purchased weapons from the United States under some agreement, or if they in fact licensed or developed their own type of munitions.”
In fact, Congress approved the $77 million sale of 1.000 GBU-39s to Israel in September, 2008, and the weapons were delivered in December. Israel was the first foreign sales of the DIMES.
DIME weapons are not banned under the Geneva Conventions because they have never been officially tested. However, any weapon capable of inflicting such horrendous damage is normally barred from use, particularly in one of the most densely populated regions in the world.
For one thing, no one is sure about how long the tungsten remains in the environment or how it could affect people who return to homes attacked by a DIME. University of Arizona cancer researcher Dr. Mark Witten, who investigates links between tungsten and leukemia, says that in his opinion “there needs to be much more research on the health effects of tungsten before the military increases its usage.”
DIMEs were not the only controversial weapons used in Gaza. The Israeli Self-Defense Forces (IDF) also made generous use of white phosphorus, a chemical that burns with intense heat and inflicts terrible burns on victims. In its vapor form it also damages breathing passages International law prohibits the weapon’s use near population areas and requires that “all reasonable precautions” be taken to avoid civilians.
Israel initially denied it was using the chemical. “The IDF acts only in accordance with what is permitted by international law and does not use white phosphorus,” said Israel’s Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi on Jan. 13.
But eyewitness accounts in Gaza and Israel soon forced the IDF to admit that they were, indeed, using the substance. On Jan 20, the IDF confessed to using phosphorus artillery shells as smoke screens, as well as 200 U.S.-made M825A1 phosphorus mortar shells on “Hamas fighters and rocket launching crews in northern Gaza.”
Three of those shells hit the UN Works and Relief Agency compound Jan. 15, igniting a fire that destroyed hundreds of tons of humanitarian supplies. Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City was also hit by a phosphorus shell. The Israelis say there were Hamas fighters near the two targets, a charge that witnesses adamantly deny.
Donatella Rovera of Amnesty International said, “Such extensive use of this weapon in Gaza’s densely-populated residential neighborhoods … and its toll on civilians, is a war crime.”
Israel is also accused of using depleted uranium ammunition (DUA), which in a UN sub-commission in 2002 found in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, the International Convention Against Torture, the Conventional Weapons Convention, and the Hague Conventions against the use of poison weapons.
DUA is not highly radioactive, but after exploding some of it turns into a gas that can easily be inhaled. The dense shrapnel that survives also tends to bury itself deeply, leaching low-level radioactivity into water tables.
Other human rights groups, including B’Tselem, Gisha, and Physicians for Human Rights, charge that the IDF intentionally targeted medical personal, killing over a dozen, including paramedics and ambulance drivers.
The International Federation for Human Rights called upon the UN Security Council to refer Israel to the International Criminal Court for possible war crimes.
While the Israelis dismiss the war crimes charges, the fact that the Israeli cabinet held a special meeting on Jan 25 to discuss the issue suggests they are concerned they could be charged with “disproportionate” use of force. The Geneva Conventions require belligerents to at “all times” distinguish between combatants and civilians and to avoid “disproportionate force” in seeking military gains.
Hamas’ use of unguided missiles fired at Israel would also be a war crime under the Conventions.
“The one-sidedness of casualty figures is one measure of disproportion,” says Richard Falk, the UN’s human rights envoy for the occupied territories. A total of 14 Israelis have been killed in the fighting, three of them civilians killed by rockets, 11 of them soldiers, four of the latter by “friendly fire.” Some 50 IDF soldiers were also wounded.
In contrast, 1330 Palestinians have died and 5450 were injured, the overwhelming number of them civilians.
“This kind of fighting constitutes a blatant violation of the laws of warfare, which we ask to be investigated by the Commission of War Crimes,” a coalition of Israeli human rights groups and Amnesty International said in a joint statement. “The responsibility of the state of Israel is beyond doubt.”
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann would coordinate the defense of any soldier or commander charged with a war crime. In any case, the U.S. would veto any effort by the UN Security Council to refer Israelis to the International Court at The Hague.
But, as the Financial Times points out, “all countries have an obligation to search out those accused of ‘grave’ breaches of the rules of war and to put them on trial or extradite them to a country that will.”
That was the basis under which Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was arrested in Britain in 1998.
“We’re in a seismic shift in international law,” Amnesty International legal advisor Christopher Hall told the Financial Times, who says that Israel’s foreign ministry is already examining the risk to Israelis who travel abroad.
“It’s like walking across the street against a red light,” he says. “The risk may be low, but you’re going to think twice before committing a crime or traveling if you have committed one.”
Chilling warning; social websites harm children's brain
Social networking websites are causing alarming changes in the brains of young users, an eminent scientist has warned.
Sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Bebo are said to shorten attention spans, encourage instant gratification and make young people more self-centred.
The claims from neuroscientist Susan Greenfield will make disturbing reading for the millions whose social lives depend on logging on to their favourite websites each day.
But they will strike a chord with parents and teachers who complain that many youngsters lack the ability to communicate or concentrate away from their screens.
More than 150million use Facebook to keep in touch with friends, share photographs and videos and post regular updates of their movements and thoughts.
A further six million have signed up to Twitter, the 'micro-blogging' service that lets users circulate text messages about themselves.
But while the sites are popular - and extremely profitable - a growing number of psychologists and neuroscientists believe they may be doing more harm than good.
Baroness Greenfield
Baroness Greenfield, an Oxford University neuroscientist and director of the Royal Institution, believes repeated exposure could effectively 'rewire' the brain.
Experts are concerned children's online social interactions can 'rewire' the brain
Computer games and fast-paced TV shows were also a factor, she said.
'We know how small babies need constant reassurance that they exist,' she told the Mail yesterday.
'My fear is that these technologies are infantilising the brain into the state of small children who are attracted by buzzing noises and bright lights, who have a small attention span and who live for the moment.'
Her comments echoed those she made during a House of Lords debate earlier this month. Then she argued that exposure to computer games, instant messaging, chat rooms and social networking sites could leave a generation with poor attention spans.
'I often wonder whether real conversation in real time may eventually give way to these sanitised and easier screen dialogues, in much the same way as killing, skinning and butchering an animal to eat has been replaced by the convenience of packages of meat on the supermarket shelf,' she said.
Lady Greenfield told the Lords a teacher of 30 years had told her she had noticed a sharp decline in the ability of her pupils to understand others.
'It is hard to see how living this way on a daily basis will not result in brains, or rather minds, different from those of previous generations,' she said.
She pointed out that autistic people, who usually find it hard to communicate, were particularly comfortable using computers.
'Of course, we do not know whether the current increase in autism is due more to increased awareness and diagnosis of autism, or whether it can - if there is a true increase - be in any way linked to an increased prevalence among people of spending time in screen relationships. Surely it is a point worth considering,' she added.
Psychologists have also argued that digital technology is changing the way we think. They point out that students no longer need to plan essays before starting to write - thanks to word processors they can edit as they go along. Satellite navigation systems have negated the need to decipher maps.
A study by the Broadcaster Audience Research Board found teenagers now spend seven-and-a-half hours a day in front of a screen.
Educational psychologist Jane Healy believes children should be kept away from computer games until they are seven. Most games only trigger the 'flight or fight' region of the brain, rather than the vital areas responsible for reasoning.
Sue Palmer, author of Toxic Childhood, said: 'We are seeing children's brain development damaged because they don't engage in the activity they have engaged in for millennia.
'I'm not against technology and computers. But before they start social networking, they need to learn to make real relationships with people.'
Bank of America and Citigroup won’t live to see May. The two banks will be nationalized in the coming weeks, and we think that the announcement can come as soon as tomorrow evening (Friday evenings are when major bank announcements and failures occur).
The US government has already committed half a trillion dollars to these two firms which is more than 10 times the amount it would cost to buy and control both companies. The market doesn’t believe that $500 billion is enough to save these companies. All the kings horses and all the kings men can’t put humpty dumpty back together again.
Today both banks made fresh new lows with Citi closing at $2.51 and Bank of America closing at $3.93. The 1 year charts below show the short term price movements. You should understand that when a bank stock’s chart looks like this, even a HEALTHY bank would be in trouble. Nobody wants their deposits tied up in a company that trades at $2. The outflows of deposits from Bank of America and Citi must be catastrophic.
On September 15, 2008, $550 BILLION disappears from the American banking system in a matter of hours and Congress is choosing to NOT look into this theft? Why?
Let's narrow down the suspects. We can leave Iran, Syria and North Korea off the list, since if any of those states had been in on this heist, Bush would have went on national TV, addressing the nation about the actions of one of these "rogue" nations and said he had directed the Pentagon to take any and all necessary actions to recover the purloined loot.
That has not happened, either with Bush or Obama.
So, what other nation would have the balls to steal that much money from Americans?
It would be a nation that attacked one of our ships in broad daylight, firing rockets, large caliber machine guns and dropping napalm on the ship in a brutal and savage attack that lasted 75 minutes. They would be so sadistic that they would machine gun survivors trying to escape, even shooting up the life rafts.
An attack that murdered 34 of our people.
It would be a country that has sent an army of spies to steal sensitive military info and financial data from the USA, at the same time, always proclaiming that the USA is their "best friend."
A country that, thru the use of tremendous amounts of money and threats, has taken over the US Congress.
A country that sent some of its intelligence operatives to a New Jersey state park on 9/11, to "document" that tragic event.
A country who's leaders said that 9/11 was very good for them.
A country that is well known for its use of "false-flag" attacks against its allies, to get those allies enraged and fighting wars for that nation.
A country that is so paranoid, it thinks the entire world is out to get them, and has threatened to nuke the entire world, using their "Sampson" option.
Hmmm, wonder what nation could be so depraved, sadistic and immoral? Any guesses?
At 2 minutes, 20 seconds into this C-Span video clip, Rep. Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania explains how the Federal Reserve told Congress members about a “tremendous draw-down of money market accounts in the United States, to the tune of $550 billion dollars.” According to Kanjorski, this electronic transfer occured over the period of an hour or two.
Here is a transcript of what Kanjorski says in the video:
On Thursday Sept 15, 2008 at roughly 11 AM The Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous draw down of money market accounts in the USA to the tune of $550 Billion dollars in a matter of an hour or two.
It was an electronic run on the banks. The treasury intervened but had they not closed down the accounts they estimated that by 2 PM that afternoon. Within 3 hours. $5.5 Trillion would have been withdrawled and collapsed and within 24 hours the world economy.
Who's the Terrorist? A Song from the Heart of Gaza
Who's the terrorist? I'm the terrorist?! How am I the terrorist when you've taken my land? Who's the terrorist? You're the terrorist! You've taken everything I own while I'm living in my homeland
You're killing us like you've killed our ancestors You want me to go to the law? What for? You're the Witness, the Lawyer, and the Judge! If you are my Judge I'll be sentenced to death You want us to be the minority? To end up the majority in the cemetery? In your dreams! You're a Democracy? Actually it's more like the Nazis Your countless raping of the Arab's soul Finally impregnated it Gave birth to your child His name: Suicide Bomber And then you call him the terrorist?
You attack me but still you cry out When i remind you it was you who attacked me You silence me and shout: "Don't they have parents to keep them at home?" "But you let small children throw stones!" WHAT?! You must have forgotten you buried our parents under the rubble of our homes And now while my agony is so immense You call me the terrorist?
Who's the terrorist? I'm the terrorist? How am I the terrorist When you've taken my land?! Who's the terrorist? You're the terrorist! You've taken everything I own while I'm living in my homeland
Why terrorist?! Because my blood is not calm It's boiling! Because I hold my head for my homeland You've killed my loved ones Now I'm all alone My parents driven out But I will remain to shout out I'm not against peace Peace is against me It's going to destroy me You don't listen to our voices You silence us and degrade us And who are you?! And when did you become ruler? Look how many you've killed and how many orphans you've created
Our mothers are crying Our fathers are in anguish Our land is disappearing And I'll tell you who you are! You grew up sported We grew up in poverty Who grew up with freedom? And who grew up in continument? We fight for Our freedom But you've made that a crime And you, the terrorist call me the terrorist!
Who's the terrorist? I'm the terrorist? How am I the terrorist When you've taken my land?! Who's the terrorist? You're the terrorist! You've taken everything I own while I'm living in my homeland
So, when will I stop being a terrorist?! When you hit me and I turn the other cheek How do you expect me to thank the one who harmed me?! I tell you what! You tell me how you want me to be! Down on my knees with my hands tied up My eyes to the ground Surrounded by bodies Houses destroyed Families driven out Our children orphaned Our freedom chained up
You oppress You kill We bury We'll remain patient We'll suppress our pain Most importantly you feel secure Just relax and leave us all the pain You see our blood is like that of dogs NOT EVEN When dogs die they receive sympathy So our blood is not as valuable as a dog's No - My blood is valuable And I will continue defending myself Even if you call me a terrorist
When the new government forms after yesterday's elections, it will receive an economy in crisis. Moreover, treasury officials are terrified, not of the giant deficit this year, but of giant deficits in the following years, which would be the road to ruin.
The figures are frightening. Tax collection in 2009 will fall as much as NIS 40 billion ($10 bn) short of earlier estimates. The budget is already short about NIS 10 billion ($2.5 bn) to meet costs because of Operation Cast Lead and other past and future demands from the defense establishment.
Almost a third of that NIS 10 billion ($2.5 bn) comes from the military campaign in the Gaza Strip, and never mind that it's over. It cost NIS 3 billion ($0.75 bn), which has to come from somewhere.
Then there is an amount to be allocated to the leverage funds, which are supposed to be joint government-private vehicles (still in the envisioning stage) to rescue businesses in trouble. These funds are supposed to lend troubled companies about NIS 5 billion ($1.25 bn) (although some observers now think the state can get away with lending less).
A third element is around NIS 1.5 billion ($375 million) to cover the demands of coalition partners in the new government, say people in the Finance Ministry.
The upshot is that with tax collection falling far short of the estimates on which the 2009 budget was based, and with costs surging far above expectations, the 2009 budget is apparently about NIS 50 billion ($12.5 bn) short. And that, dear reader, is equivalent to 7% of Israel's gross domestic product.
The 2009 deficit, which should have been 1% of GDP, will likely be 5%, no more, because Israel simply cannot allow itself a larger deficit.
The Finance Ministry plans to slash budgets by about NIS 8 billion ($2.0 bn) from defense spending, education, welfare and healthcare.
How much these essentials can be spared depends on the next government's support for reducing defense spending.
The government plans to finance the deficit by raising money through further local bond issues, and overseas too, by utilizing U.S. guarantees to raise money at relatively low cost. It would step up the activities of the Israel Bonds organization.
The treasury would prefer to raise money by taking advantage of the rest of the $9 billion in guarantees granted to Israel by the United States in 2003, during the second intifada.
That gave Israel the right to issue $9 billion worth of bonds on the U.S. market, repayment of which is guaranteed by Washington. American backing for the bonds means that the interest Israelis have to pay on the bonds is as low as possible - just a hair above the rates on comparable bond issues backed by the Federal Reserve. Israel has used only $4.4 billion of the guarantees. The last time the state issued bonds in the United States backed by the guarantees was in 2004.
However, the United States plans to deduct $1 billion out of the remaining $4.6 billion, to punish Israel for its investments in territories beyond the Green Line.
If Jerusalem can't reverse that decree, it will still have $3.6 billion in guarantees. In any case, the Finance Ministry wouldn't blow the whole amount inside a year: It would probably spread the amount to 2010 and perhaps 2011 as well.
Everybody at Finance agrees that Israel's problem isn't just a giant deficit this year. It's the state of the economy in the following years.
The Finance Ministry does not dismiss the importance of the deficit in 2009, but it's a lot more worried about the deficit of 2010.
We can deal with a one-time high deficit, say officials, but a high, multiyear deficit could destroy Israel.
The aim of the 2009 budget, which will be approved in May at the earliest, and that of 2010, which (hopefully) should be submitted for cabinet approval in August or September, is to attain manageable deficits and decrease them over time.
The Finance Ministry says that if the world begins to emerge from its crisis in 2009 or 2010, Israel could achieve modest economic growth.
But ministry chieftains say the way to keep spending under control is to trim the defense budget. It's not a new idea, yet it's a revolutionary vein of thought. What we have is top Finance Ministry people admitting up front that Israel can't increase its defense budget by NIS 100 billion in 10 years. The new government, they believe, is going to face hard choices on this issue.
IN JANUARY 2, 1998, David Cole renounced Holocaust revisionism and all of the work that he had done for the cause of historical truth. Many people are wondering what happened. What brought on this change of heart? From all appearances it was a result of threats made against him by the Jewish Defense League (JDL).
In response to his public comments that there are serious flaws in the popularly accepted quasi-historical accounts of the Holocaust, they launched a campaign of hate against him that produced an old-fashioned signed statement of recantation. This campaign included a vicious and threatening diatribe, "Monstrous Traitor," that offered a reward for his home address and was posted on the JDL Website for some weeks or months. When Cole offered them a statement of reversal of the offending opinions, they took down the page aimed at inciting violence toward him and replaced it with the statement of acceptable thought. The JDL used terror tactics openly, and it worked.
Intolerance, threats and force are not typically a good atmosphere in which to find truth. Irrespective of this encounter with intellectual muggers, his work will stand or fall on its own merits in the long term. The film "David Cole interviews Dr. Franciszek Piper" is every bit as valid now as it was prior to the strong-arm intimidation of the man who made it.
The conclusions of David Cole's film have been confirmed recently in Robert Jan Van Pelt and Deborah Dwork's, "Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present." According to Van Pelt and Dwork:
"Visitors [to Auschwitz] are not told that the crematorium they see is largely a postwar reconstruction." (p.363)
We await Van Pelt and Dwork's retraction, but will not be holding its breath in the meantime.
IN REGARD TO ANYTHING relating to the Middle East or Jewish subjects, the USA has many of the characteristics of a totalitarian country and many of the groups who call themselves "liberal" or "peace camp" or "radical" are on that subject the most intolerant, the most totalitarian, the most dishonest and racist. . . . A totalitarian society not only does not tolerate a freedom of opinion, but it cultivates by all means in its power a "received opinion," which all have to parrot, not only without checking it, but often without any understanding of what it means.
Perhaps some Americans will think that I exaggerate. But the danger of a totalitarian regime was always thought to be exaggerated before it arrived. Only afterwards, when it was too late, was it found that the society was already totalitarian in some aspects which were merely enlarged.
There is only one sure antidote to the totalitarian danger: To fight all aspects of totalitarianism in all the parts of one's society and to follow always the dictum of Socrates that the unexamined life is not worth living, and therefore with the utmost freedom and without fear of any blackmail to examine everything in the light of a universal concept of justice, applicable equally to all human beings.
- Israel Shahak
In forging their own brand of totalitarianism in the U.S., the Zionists continue to manipulate the victims of the Nazi holocaust as their chief weapon.
- Alfred Lilienthal
Commentary
WHILE THIS PAGE is ostensibly about David Cole, his case really only serves as an illustration of a problem seldom discussed in public, and therefore not known to most of the public. Cole's experience demonstrates graphically a fairly benign instance of the methods used around the world, day in and day out, to relentlessly and ruthlessly quash attempts by honest people to examine in detail a historical event of legitimate interest to a great many, if not all people in the West and Middle East. The concern about this is not mollified by the fact that many of those who engage in this program of intimidation through slander, mass propaganda and physical threats do so in sincerity, with a firm conviction that what they do has a greater good which more than justifies its wrongs. We ignore these wrongs at the risk of our legitimate rule of law and our own freedoms. The seeming dichotomy of great wars fought by opposing religions who both seek to convey the love of their God to all people, and who will slaughter millions of them to do that, is no mystery if you look at it from the zealot's or fanatic's perspective. The fact that others do not see the greater good at work is due to their own spiritual shortcomings he tells himself, and in the land of the heathen you do what you must to survive and keep the faith. Whatever you must.
Our position on this affliction of the fanatic is a simple one. The one universal good that outweighs all others must be a person's right to follow any life path they choose so long as they offer no infringement on the rights of others. Our Declaration of Independence speaks of the inalienable rights we all have to our lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness, which is to say the sanctity of our own bodies, freedom of movement and association, and freedom of thought.Those who seek to deprive others of any of these outside the unfortunate but necessary repressions of the State we call justice earn for themselves what they gave. The principle is that of equity at its most basic level. As you deprive others of their liberty, so shall society see that you are deprived in equal measure, because there is no justification for any individual to take away any other individual's freedoms, even to the smallest part. That power is and must be confined to our mechanisms of government.
The right to harbor unpopular, even intolerant beliefs, and the right to express them are protected by the Constitution, which spells out the unqualified right of all Americans to unfettered freedom of speech. But intimidation aimed at silencing speech, and thus infringing on that right, be it through slander, threats or force, is not so protected. In fact, people who used those exact methods of intimidation to keep blacks from voting found themselves jailed for conspiring to deprive others of their lawful civil rights.
The basis for this was a post-Civil War law passed to address widespread abuses of that kind. That law has expanded quite liberally to include now a variegated collection of non-enumerated rights, such as going to school or working at a job, free of harassment aimed at depriving you of those opportunities. It is not necessary to argue about whether everything falling under this aegis is a legitimate "right" in order to see the illegitimacy of how it is applied, because we will look in a direction that should be a given, toward the inarguable central rights, to see how they fare in the protection game.
It is fashionable now to approve the increasing scope of civil rights law, yet some attempt to make the case that applying it to portions of the Bill of Rights is not proper or not needed. A common rationale is that differences of opinion are private matters that government should not, cannot be involved in. A valid point when only differences of opinion are present, invalid when coercion is applied to limit or deny freedom of speech or deprive someone of their livelihood (such as black-balling dissident authors in the publishing industry). Once coercion enters, the argument is without logic, for if government oversight is valid for protecting any one right then it is valid for all. Politically selected application of justice is a repugnant practice that coarsens and weakens all involved.
Yet that is exactly what is taking place in this country today. Holding generally unpopular views on a number of topical subjects can put you in a class where Justice is truly blindfolded. No one seems to see the blatant abuses committed by those who oppose those views, including vicious beatings on the steps of courthouses, arson, letter-bombs, terrorizing with threats of harm. If you happen to be pushing a topic deemed by popular opinion to be so lacking in merit that it somehow poses a danger to the citizenry, you will find little interest on the part of authorities to address these crimes or lessen their occurrence. This is nothing less than state and public sanctioned vigilantism, or terrorism, and it has no place in societies that would call themselves civilized
One of the hottest areas for this is Holocaust historical revisionism, which to a newcomer seems an oddity. (Emotions run high over history ?? That's the class you sleep in.) Attempts to point out glaring inconsistencies in the popular and now institutionalized account bring howls of rage from those who disagree. If the initial rage isn't enough to make someone cease and desist (which it often is), then the ante is raised and will keep on being raised to whatever level is needed to silence the target. It may start with simple slander, automatic and unfounded labels of "anti-Semite", "denier", "hater", "Nazi" and more are pasted on with the often expressed intent of destroying resolve and/or career, legitimate aims because the target is deemed "unfit" to be a member of any decent society. Those who don't give up are then marginalized by campaigns to convince the public of their evil and 100% erroneous views, their universally undesirable nature. When these aren't effective enough, then threats of injury or death are employed, such as with David Cole. At the extreme end, people are killed, like American-Arab peace activist Sami Odeh, murdered by a letter-bomb of suspected Zionist origin.
The open existence of and tolerance shown for this despicable practice fouls our national social fabric immensely. This is a major thing we'd like to see the public become aware of and hopefully say, "You know, this seems pretty un-American to me. And even if I'm wrong about that, it sucks to allow people to hurt others because they don't like their opinions. And I believe government should give some attention to what's going on." The rest of our job would then be very easy, as frightened people with much knowledge of the truth of the matter could at last speak openly. We might turn out to be right, and we might be wrong. But it would be settled quickly and we could quit hassling about it. Those who claim their feelings are so tender that this can't be allowed would be over it before you know it, and life would go on a little more peacefully.
If getting rid of a death-threat by giving in to coercion was what it took for Cole to regain peace of mind, we understand and neither resent nor condemn, only empathize. No one should be faced with an ultimatum to choose between their beliefs and their personal safety in the United States of America. That is a despicable, and in our minds, criminal affair.
We are all forced to recite a government mandated litany affirming a nonsensical collective belief in non-existent Arab terrorists every time we board an airplane. While we dociley play these sheep-like roles in the instillment of our own "good think," the real terrorists operate publicly and unhindered because they belong to any of a number of designated groups whose excesses one is forbidden to criticize, however legitimately or temperately.
It is disturbing to realize how very far this nation, and much of the Western world, has fallen from the fiery spirit which threw off the yokes of ancient tyrranies in the 18th and 19th centuries, ushering in the Age of Enlightenment. That light now dims because we are all too willing to take "Give me liberty or give me death!" and Newspeak convert it to, "Give me liberty at any cost except personal discomfort or civic involvement." This is how it comes to be that good men stand and say nothing, how in fact we came to be where we are now.
But let us return to the matter at hand, David Cole's run-in with the dark side of the strident opposition to open examination of a historical issue. Addressing the possibility that this complete reversal of belief was sincere, then we hope David Cole is successful in his new endeavors whatever they may be. Perhaps we'll meet on opposite sides in some future debate forum. That would be a treat, because David was always a worthy opponent; quick, well informed, and with a gift for public speaking. He'll do well in any situation, because he has enough intelligence to sort truth from pretense all by himself.
As long as the moral vigilantes and intellectual terrorists among us allow him to, that is.
Forty-Six Important Unanswered Questions Regarding the Nazi Gas Chambers
By David Cole
FOREWORD
Professor Deborah Lipstadt, author of Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, is the leading voice on college campuses and in the media arguing against intellectual freedom with regard to the holocaust controversy. She is passionate -- well, obsessive -- about not wanting to exchange views with revisionists.
"[A]t times," she writes, "I have felt compelled to prove something I knew to be true. I had constantly to avoid being inadvertently sucked into a debate that is no debate and an argument that is no argument." She adds that revisionism is "totally irrational . . . not responsive to logic" and that "evidence plays no role" in revisionist research.
I'm going to go out on a limb here. I know that Deborah Lipstadt and hundreds of other trained scholars with access to the relevant archives in Europe and the old Soviet Union have studied the Nazi gas chambers for half a century and know everything there is to know about them. Despite this universally accepted fact, I am presenting here a few questions about the notorious homicidal gassing chambers that are being raised by a young scholar named David Cole.
David Cole traveled to Europe twice to make on-site inspections of the still extant "gas chambers." The lady who financed each of these little expeditions wanted me to go with Cole to direct the project. I thought that would be a nifty idea. I'd never been to Europe and here was my chance. But Cole kept telling me he could handle it on his own. After awhile I got the message. He didn't want me to go. In the end, each time he went alone, or rather he and a camera woman. I think he was right. He didn't need direction from me. He handled his responsibilities very well on his own.
When you read David Cole's 46 unanswered questions about the Nazi gas chambers you may feel yourself hard-pressed -- despite what Deborah Lipstadt would have you believe -- to find them totally irrational, not responsive to logic, or that evidence plays no role in their design. Of course, you are probably not the towering intellectual that Deborah Lipstadt is, so if you find a few or perhaps more than a few of the 46 questions disturbing in their logic and rationality, precisely because they are based on the physical evidence commonly used to identify the "gas chambers," why not ring up Professor Lipstadt at Emory University and ask her for the correct answers to these interesting puzzles?
Then pass her answers on to me. I'll run them by David Cole and see what he has to say about them. Maybe we'll be able to post Lipstadt's criticisms of the 46 Questions here, along with David's response to her criticisms. In the academy they call this process peer review. Ms. Lipstadt would probably point out to you that David Cole is not part of the "academy." Let's not call it peer review then. Let's just call it talking it over. Tell her you have 46 questions about the German gassing chambers and you would like to talk them over with her.
Bradley R. Smith 9 October 1995
The Zyklon-B Issue
AT THE FORMER concentration camps of Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau, we find the following scenario: The buildings which used to serve as the camp delousing facilities still have extremely high traces of the gas Zyklon B, which was used in these buildings to disinfest clothing, mattresses, etc. Also, there is heavy blue staining on the walls both inside the delousing chambers, INSIDE the hallways between the delousing chambers, and OUTSIDE the building, on the EXTERIOR WALLS of the delousing facilities.
However, the interiors of the Krema 1 gas chamber (Auschwitz Main Camp) and the Krema 2 and 3 gas chambers (Auschwitz-Birkenau), where hundreds of thousands if not millions of people are said to have been gassed, show only minute traces of Zyklon B and no blue staining.
Also, the Auschwitz camp barracks and offices, which were fumigated with the Zyklon B from time to time, show similarly minute traces of the gas, and no blue staining.
(1) What explanation can there be for the low levels of traces, and absence of blue staining, in the homicidal gas chambers?
(2) If one suggests that the Zyklon traces in the homicidal gas chambers have been "weathered away", how can one explain the traces and staining on the OUTSIDE of the delousing complexes...traces which have NOT been weathered away after fifty years?
(3)It has been suggested that the amount of Zyklon B needed to kill people, even cumulative millions of people, would not leave traces as strong as the amount needed to kill lice in the delousing chambers. But when we factor in the Zyklon B traces still existing in the camp barracks and offices, we see that infrequent gassings will still leave SOME traces. Thus, we have the traces in the camp offices and barracks, which reveal what levels of traces would remain, fifty years after the fact, in rooms which were gassed infrequently.
Then we have the delousing chambers, which reveal what levels of traces would remain, fifty years after the fact, in rooms which were gassed frequently. Can it not be expected that the levels of traces in the homicidal gas chambers, while perhaps not being as high as those in the delousing rooms, would AT LEAST be substantially higher than the traces in the buildings which were only fumigated infrequently? Yet the traces in Kremas 1, 2 and 3 are not markedly higher than the office and barracks traces. Does this not suggest that the traces which DO exist in Kremas 1, 2 and 3 come from the same fumigation routine that all the other buildings went through?
(4)Once one has fashioned an explanation for the minute traces and no blue staining in Kremas 1, 2 and 3 at Auschwitz, how does one THEN explain the HIGH levels of Zyklon B traces and DEEP, FLOOR-TO-CEILING blue staining in three of the four Majdanek gas chambers? Far fewer people are said to have been killed at Majdanek than at Auschwitz. The four Majdanek gas chambers would never have had to handle the workload of Kremas 1,2 and 3. Yet whereas Kremas 1,2 and 3 have only minute traces and no blue staining, three of the four Majdanek gas chambers have heavy traces and deep blue staining. How could gassing a GREATER amount of people (at Auschwitz) leave minute traces and no blue staining, yet gassing a much SMALLER amount (at Majdanek) leave heavy traces and deep blue staining?
(5)The gas chambers at the Majdanek camp not only have heavy Zyklon B blue stains on the INSIDE, but also on the OUTSIDE walls, as well. What could account for this? The delousing facilities at Birkenau have heavy blue staining on their outside walls, staining which is said to come from the mattresses which were propped up against the outside walls and beaten after delousing (to rid them of Zyklon B residue). Do the heavy blue stains on the outside walls of the Majdanek gas chambers therefore suggest that these rooms were used as delousing facilities? Isn't the building which contains the gas chambers labeled the "Bath and Disinfection" complex? If, as with Auschwitz, it is said that gassing people wouldn't leave blue stains on the INSIDE walls of a homicidal gas chamber, how then, at Majdanek, could gassing people leave heavy blue stains not only on the INSIDE walls but also on the OUTSIDE ones as well?
(6) To sum up the Zyklon B issue, we can take an overview of the Nazi gas chambers and their respective states RE Zyklon B traces:
Krema 1 (Auschwitz Main Camp): Minute traces, no blue staining
Krema 2 (Auschwitz-Birkenau): Minute traces, no blue staining
Krema 3 (Auschwitz-Birkenau): Minute traces, no blue staining.
Majdanek gas chambers 1, 3 and 4: Heavy traces, heavy blue staining (on inside and outside walls).
Dachau gas chamber: No traces, no blue staining.
Mauthausen gas chamber: No traces, no blue staining.
The revisionist explanation for the above is:
Kremas 1, 2 and 3 were not used as gas chambers; -- the only Zyklon B they saw was from the routine camp fumigations.
Majdanek rooms 1, 3 and 4 were delousing rooms, like the ones at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The Dachau gas chamber was a shower.
The Mauthausen gas chamber was a shower
What theory can be offered which explains the wildly divergent states of the gas chambers re Zyklon B traces, while still supporting the concept of mass homicidal gassings at these camps?
Unanswered Questions Regarding the Physical Evidence at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp (Poland)
(7) Why was the area between Kremas 2 and 3, the area where thousands of people were marched daily to their deaths, left completely unfenced? The ditches which run the length of the camp perimeter would make a person invisible both to ground fire AND fire from the guard tower. Why would the Nazis risk an attempted escape, especially considering the fact that many inmates were gassed after they had been in the camp for a while, and knew what their fate would be if marched into either of those buildings? Doesn't the Auschwitz State Museum claim that the inmates would often "riot" as they were being marched toward Kremas 2 and 3?
(8) Why were Kremas 2 and 3 not hidden in any way from the view of the inmates? Isn't it claimed at the Auschwitz State Museum that gassings were stopped at Krema 1 (Auschwitz Main Camp) and moved to Birkenau because the inmates were starting to get an idea of the homicidal purpose of Krema 1? Why then were Kremas 2 and 3 put in plain sight of all sectors of the Birkenau camp, with no camouflage of any kind? Wouldn't this just create hundreds of thousands of "eyewitnesses", with everyone in the camp becoming well aware of the exterminations (and with many of these inmates later transferred to other camps in other parts of Europe to "spread the word" about the gassing program)? How could this profit the Nazis?
(9) It is claimed that there were four holes on the roofs of Kremas 2 and 3, which served as Zyklon B induction holes. The best piece of evidence that these holes ever existed is found in the U.S. aerial photos taken of Auschwitz during the war. Is there any discrepancy between the size of these holes as depicted in the U.S. aerial photos, and the size of the holes as depicted on the model of the Krema 2 gas chamber (on display at the Auschwitz State Museum and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum), the size as theorized by Jean-Claude Pressac in his book "Auschwitz; Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers", the size as depicted in the movie "Triumph of the Spirit" (which recreated a gassing at Krema 2), and the size as described over the decades by eyewitnesses? Indeed, can it be said that the holes as depicted in the aerial photos are ridiculously large...larger than what would have been needed for pouring in a can of Zyklon B gas?
(10) Why are the four holes not present today in the roof slab of Krema 2? The roof slab, though collapsed, is intact and both the top and underside of the roof are still visible. There are two crudely chiseled holes at opposite ends of the roof slab (one is more like a huge crack than a hole), but the other two holes are non existent, and the underside of the roof, with the two-by-fours lining the ceiling still visible, shows no sign of two holes having ever been present. There are also no traces of the two holes on the top of the roof. How can the absence of the two holes, and any traces of the two holes, be explained?
(11) What circumstances would produce the Krema 2 roof slab as we now see it, with two holes visible and the other two non-existent? If the Nazis attempted to erase the traces of the roof holes, why did they stop after two? Why would they expend much effort to erase all traces of two of the roof holes, then not make any effort to erase the two which survived the demolition?
(12) Could the still existing roof holes have been added after the liberation, by the Soviets or Poles? Doesn't Pressac admit that these two holes don't correspond with the positions of the holes in the aerial photos (Pressac says that this might be because the roof "shifted" during demolition, but even if the roof "shifted", that wouldn't account for why these holes, which were supposed to run in a straight line down the middle of the roof, have changed their positions, and are no longer in a straight line down the middle of the intact roof slab)? These holes are in incredibly bad condition; their edges are consistently rough, with not an inch of smoothness left. And they are no longer circular. They look like someone took a jack-hammer and roughly hammered through the roof slab. It is explained by Auschwitz State Museum officials that the demolition of the roof is what accounts for the awful condition of the holes (that is, they USED to be round and smooth until the demolition).
But if one observes the wreckage of the "undressing room" roof slab, which was similarly destroyed and is now in even worse shape than the gas chamber roof slab, one sees the remains of the undressing room front ventilation hole, which is still round and smooth even after the demolition and fifty years of laying around as rubble. Why did the undressing room roof hole survive intact, while the two still existing gas chamber roof holes emerged from the demolition without even the slightest trace that they had once been round and smooth? If we consider that the two still existing gas chamber roof holes don't correspond with their supposed position on the roof, can we theorize that MAYBE these two holes were chiseled in after the liberation? It is now admitted by the Auschwitz State Museum that the Soviets, after liberation, drilled four "Zyklon B induction holes" in the roof of Krema 1 (Auschwitz Main Camp). One needn't assume bad faith on the part of the Soviets (they might have honestly believed that they were "restoring" the roof to the state in which it had once been), but this act clearly establishes that the Soviets DID in fact drill post-liberation "Zyklon B induction holes" in roofs that, at that time, had none. Is it possible that this accounts for the two sloppy "Zyklon B induction holes" in the roof slab of the Krema 2?
(13) It is said that the Nazis destroyed Kremas 2 and 3 in order to hide the proofs of their gas chambers. But what "proof" of gassings would have been provided by Krema 2 if Krema 2 had not been dynamited? There are no heavy Zyklon B traces or blue stains on the walls, and great care was obviously taken to remove even the slightest trace of two of the Zyklon B induction holes. The Krema 2 gas chamber would have resembled an ordinary morgue. Was the destruction of Krema 2 an attempt to hide the evidence of a gas chamber, or simply the destruction of a cremation facility in the face of the advancing Soviets? Were cremation facilities at other camps, camps that were never claimed to have gas chambers, also destroyed?
(14) If one is to believe that four Zyklon B induction holes were at one time in the roof slab of Krema 2, it must be assumed that the Nazis went through great pains to meticulously hide any traces of at least two of those holes. Yet we are told that when the Soviets, after liberation, "reopened" the Zyklon B induction holes in the Krema 1 gas chamber state (at the time of liberation, it was being used as an air-raid shelter), they know exactly where to "reopen" the four holes because the traces where these holes had been were STILL VISIBLE. The idea that the Zyklon B induction hole traces were still visible is supported by the Auschwitz State Museum officials, and by author Jean-Claude Pressac. Why didn't the Nazis attempt to "cover-up" THOSE holes, especially keeping in mind that the Krema 1 gas chamber had been abandoned as a gas chamber AT LEAST a year before liberation, giving the Nazis more than enough time to erase the traces.
The Nazis were apparently able to do an incredibly good job of erasing the hole traces in the Krema 2 roof, even though time was short (the Nazis knew the Soviets were advancing, and they were busy making preparations to abandon the camp), yet we are told that they did NOT attempt to likewise cover up the hole traces in the Krema 1 roof slab, even though they had at least a year to do so. Why would the Nazis do such a fastidiously good job of hiding the existence of Zyklon B induction holes in a roof that they were then going to dynamite (Krema 2), yet allow the hole traces to remain in a roof that was left intact for the advancing Soviets (Krema 1)? Isn't that backwards?
Unanswered Questions Regarding the Physical Evidence at the Mauthausen Concentration Camp (Austria)
(15) The gas chamber at concentration camp Mauthausen (in Austria) has no locks on the doors, and no holes or fittings where locks may once have been. The doors can be opened from inside or outside. How could human beings have been gassed in this room?
(16) The peepholes in the two Mauthausen gas chamber doors have no hemispherical metal grid covering the glass, as would have been necessary to prevent the victims from knocking out the glass and causing a gas leak. There are no holes or fittings where a grid might once have been. Doesn't Pressac write extensively about the need for such hemispherical grids? Doesn't Pressac recount survivor testimony regarding the need for such grids during a homicidal gassing? With no grid, what stopped the inmates from knocking out the glass, using either their hands or the ample shower piping in the chamber?
(17) Why are there no Zyklon B traces, or blue stains, in this chamber?
(18) The hole in the ceiling of this chamber, through which the Zyklon B crystals were supposedly poured, is small enough to be blocked by the inmates hands, and the ceiling is low enough for them to block the hole. How could the Zyklon B be effectively poured in?
(19) There is a large drain in the floor of this room. There are no holes or fittings where a cover for this drain might have been attached. What would stop the victims from brushing the Zyklon B crystals down this drain?
(20) Unlike the Dachau "fake shower room", which indeed has fake shower heads (which were directly screwed into the concrete to a maze of water pipes which run the length of the ceiling AND across the walls. Doesn't this room resemble a real shower room? How do we know it wasn't?
(21) What would have been the wisdom of construction a fake shower room with such a maze of pipes running across the ceiling and walls? Wouldn't the victims have torn these fixtures down? Doesn't Pressac write about how the victims in the Auschwitz gas chambers would destroy the electrical fixtures and anything else in the chamber? Wouldn't the pipes serve as perfect weapons with which to smash a hole through the unguarded peepholes (not to mention the doors have no locks)? And if the prisoners didn't wish to block the Zyclon B induction hole with their hands, the showers heads would've fit inside the hole nicely. Why wasn't the "fake shower heads screwed directly into the ceiling" method (a la Dachau) employed here?
(22) Considering the absence of Zyklon B traces, locks on the doors, peephole covers, and a viable means of pouring in the Zyklon B, and factoring in the floor drain and the water pipes and genuine shower heads in this room, why can't we assume this was a genuine shower room?
Unanswered Questions Regarding the Physical Evidence at the Dachau Concentration Camp (Germany)
(23) The method of Zyklon B induction for the Dachau gas chamber is claimed to be via two chutes carved through one of the walls, through which the Zyklon B would be poured. What would have stopped the victims from putting their backs against the mouths of these chutes, thus preventing the crystals from entering the room?
(24) If the crystals WERE able to enter the room, the two chutes are located just above two large drains in the floor. There are no holes or fittings where covers for these drains might have been. What would stop the crystals from falling down the drains?
(25) There is a mystery room (not open to the public but visible through several windows) adjoining the gas chamber room. This room appears to have water and steam pipes which appear to lead into the gas chamber. Was the gas chamber room actually a shower? What is the purpose of this "mystery room"? What can be gained by ignoring this room which, it stands to reason, must have had SOME purpose?
(26) It is often said that the Nazis tried to hide the evidence of their extermination program by speaking in code, and rarely speaking of the exterminations on the record. It is similarly held that, as it became clear that they were losing the war, the Nazis tried to destroy the proofs of their crimes (the destruction of the four Birkenau Kremas is said to have been part of this "cover-up"). How, then, does one explain the Dachau gas chamber? The obviously false shower heads are incontrovertible proof of the homicidal purpose of this room. It is impossible not explain away the fake shower heads/a homicidal gas chamber. Yet we are to believe that this gas chamber was NEVER USED. And we are also supposed to believe that the room in its present state is exactly as the U.S. Army found it when the camp was liberated. Now, the details of the liberation of Dachau are well known: Dachau was not taken in some surprise attack. The guards at Dachau knew that the Americans were on their way. Therefore, we are asked to believe that the Nazis, KNOWING the camp would be surrendered, left the gas chamber room (which was not even being USED as a gas chamber) in a state which unashamedly points to its homicidal purpose. Why were the fake shower heads not removed?
Why was there no attempt at a "cover-up," like at Auschwitz? Unlike the Auschwitz gas chambers, THIS one was not even in use! What good was an unused room which only served to scream to the world "the Nazis are gassing the Jews"? Why would the Nazis, who were NOT using the "gas chamber" to kill people, leave it in this blatantly homicidal state, especially as the Americans drew closer? Keep in mind that, with the fake shower heads, this room was also impossible to us as a SHOWER. Therefore, this room served NO PURPOSE: it wasn't used as a gas chamber, and couldn't be used as a shower. We are asked to accept that the Nazis kept a large, USELESS room in one of the more important buildings in the Dachau camp (the "gas chamber" is located in the building which houses the Zyklon B clothing fumigation cubicles) and that this room remained UNUSED for years but was never stripped of the fake shower heads which pointed irrefutably to the Nazi's murderous intentions.
Surely, understanding the great pains the Nazis took to keep their gassing/extermination plans a secret, and the great pains they supposedly took at OTHER camps to "hide their crimes" once the Allies were advancing (i.e. the destruction of Kremas 2 through 5 at Auschwitz), we can expect that they would have performed the very simple task of removing the fake shower heads (and perhaps plastering over the marks where the shower heads had been). Why didn't the Nazis do this?
There might be a simple answer to the Dachau shower head issue. The height of the ceiling in the "Dachau gas chamber" is presently 7.6 feet. However, in Document L-159, No. 47 of the 79th Congress, 1st Session (Exhibit NO. USA-222; IMT, XXXVII, p. 621), which details the U.S. Army's investigation of the Dachau camp after liberation, the ceiling of this room is measured at 10 feet high. The fake shower heads which exist today embedded in the 7.6 foot high ceiling are made of sheet metal. Document No. 47 describes the 10 foot high ceiling as having "brass fixtures", which might very well have been genuine shower heads and pipes but which, in any event, are long absent from the ceiling of this room. Basically, sometime between the liberation of Dachau, and the media blitz regarding the "Dachau gas chamber", a 10 foot high ceiling with bass fixtures became a 7.6 foot high ceiling with cone-shaped sheet metal fake shower heads. How? I think we can take a guess!
Remember that the record of the U.S. Army (and the U.S. government, for that matter) is not very good when it comes to being honest about Dachau. If we are to assume that the Army created a fraudulent "gas chamber", it helps to understand that there is already proof that the Army was less than honest when presenting Dachau to the world. Most notable in this respect is the photographic sleight-of-hand which is still employed today (especially at the Weisenthal Center's high-tech "Museum of Tolerance" here in L.A.) where a photo of a door to one of the Dachau ZYKLON B FUMIGATION CUBICLES, complete with poisonous gas warning, skull and crossbones, and gassing schedule, is shown (often with a soldier standing in front) along with the caption that this is the door to the Dachau "HOMICIDAL" gas chamber (thus giving the impression that Zyklon B gas was used in the alleged homicidal gas chamber). This is pure fraud, and not the kind of fraud that the Army could have perpetrated "by accident". In pictures released by the Army, the doors to the small fumigation cubicles were portrayed as the doors to the alleged homicidal gas chamber...and this is something that doesn't happen by accident. For people like my mother and her family, Jews living in the U.S. during the forties, it's the Dachau gas chamber propaganda that they most clearly remember as their first exposure to the concept of homicidal gas chambers.
Unanswered Questions Regarding the Physical Evidence at the Majdanek Concentration Camp (Poland)
(27) Gas chamber 1 has two doors, both of which open INTO the gas chamber room. How can a homicidal gas chamber have two doors which open IN? Wouldn't the bodies be pressed up against the doors, as described numerous times by eyewitnesses?
(28) The main door into the gas chamber 1 has no locks. It can be opened from either the inside or the outside. There are no holes or fittings where a lock might have been. What stopped the inmates from opening this door?
(29) Gas chamber 1 has a plate glass window in it. There are no holes or fittings around the window where bars or any other kind of cover might once have been. Since the plaster around the window is covered with blue stains, we know that it is the plaster that existed during the time Zyklon B gas was used in this room. If there WERE bars or any other type of cover attached to this window, why are there no traces? What would have stopped the inmates from trying to climb out the window, or breaking the window and causing a gas leak?
(30) There is a room INSIDE gas chamber 1. Why would there be a separate room INSIDE a gas chamber? Doesn't this room indicate that gas chamber 1 was used for something OTHER than killing people?
(31) Gas chambers 2 and 3 are designed backwards. Chamber 2 has a Zyklon B induction hole in the ceiling, but no Zyklon B traces or blue stains. Chamber 3 has heavy, floor-to-ceiling Zyklon B traces and blue stains, but no Zyklon B induction hole. And, like the roof of Krema 2 at Auschwitz, the ceiling shows no sign of a hole having ever been there. Why would chamber 2 have a Zyklon B induction hole and no traces, and chamber 3 plenty of traces but no hole?
(32) The ceilings in chambers 2 and 4 are low enough so that the Zyklon B induction holes could have been blocked by the victims. What would have stopped the inmates from blocking the holes?
(33) The doors to chambers 2,3 and 4 are built to latch from the outside AND the inside. The latches can be opened from either side. Does this suggest that the rooms were used for something other than killing people?
(34) Getting back to the issue of hemispherical grids covering the peepholes, it is said that the point of these grids was to prevent the inmates from breaking the glass of the peepholes and causing a gas leak. Yet the hemispherical grids attached to the peepholes on the doors of chambers 2, 3 and 4 are attached on the OUTSIDE of the doors. These grids wouldn't prevent someone INSIDE the room from breaking the glass...but they WOULD prevent someone OUTSIDE the room from doing so. Why are the grids not on the inside? Does this contradict with the statements by Pressac and the eyewitnesses regarding the need for grids in a homicidal gas chamber?
(35) The Majdanek camp is built on a hill. At the top of the hill is the camp crematorium. At the opposite end of the camp, at the bottom of the hill, is the "Bath and Disinfection" complex, which houses the gas chambers. From the Nazi's point of view, what was the wisdom in putting the gas chambers at the opposite end of the camp from the ovens, and at the bottom of the hill (after each gassing, the dead bodies would have to have been dragged up the hill, the length of the entire camp, to the ovens)?
(36) As the Nazis were preparing to abandon the Majdanek camp, they destroyed the crematorium building. Why were the gas chambers not similarly destroyed? Why would the Nazis leave their weapons of mass murder intact for the world to see? How hard would it have been for the Nazis to destroy the gas chambers, just like they did the crematorium building? At least, shouldn't the Nazis have filled in the Zyklon B induction holes, which serve as direct proofs of homicidal gassings? Either way, the destruction of the crematorium is clear proof that the Nazis had both the time and the ability to demolish buildings in the camp if they wanted to. Why were the gas chambers not demolished?
(37) In his book "Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers", Jean-Claude Pressac publishes a photo of the Majdanek gas chambers, with the caption "Photograph taken at the Majdanek concentration camp in June 1979, showing one of the disinfestation gas chambers thought to be a homicidal gas chamber." On page 555, he also has this to say about the Majdanek gas chambers: "I am sorry to say, and I am not the only one in the West, that the Majdanek homicidal and/or delousing gas chambers are still waiting for a true historian, which is mildly upsetting in view of the fact that the camp fell into the hands of the Russians intact in 1944." Do these comments suggest that the gas chambers at Majdanek may in fact have been disinfestation gas chambers? At least, don't these comments suggest that there has not yet been a thorough investigation into the purpose of these rooms? **
(38) To sum up the Majdanek gas chamber issue: If we take Pressac's comments and then factor in the doors that don't lock, the doors that open INTO the gas chamber, the doors with latches that can be manipulated from both the outside AND the inside, the window in gas chamber 1, the room inside gas chamber 1, the lack of any Zyklon B induction hole in gas chamber 3, the lack of any Zyklon B traces in gas chamber 2 (which DOES have a "Zyklon B induction hole"), the heavy blue stains on the OUTSIDE of the building, and the location of the building, at the bottom of a hill, at the opposite end of the camp from the crematorium, is it reasonable to suggest that these rooms were delousing chambers?
In what can only be considered an unfortunate example of how major disputes between Holocaust historians are shielded from the public, the same room Pressac describes in his book as a "disinfestation gas chamber" is featured in the book "The World Must Know," the official book of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., written by Museum director Dr. Michael Berenbaum. In that book, Berenbaum describes the room as a HOMICIDAL gas chamber and, what's more, a CASTING of this room was made for display AT THE MUSEUM, as PROOF of the homicidal gas chambers! Thus, in both Berenbaum's book AND in the Museum itself, the ONLY material proof given of homicidal gassings is THIS ROOM, a room Pressac staunchly believes to be a disinfestation gas chamber (in fact, in his Auschwitz book, Pressac actually RIDICULES those who say that this Majdanek room is proof of homicidal gassings, and criticizes everyone from the man who prosecuted Faurisson in France to the Majdanek State Museum personnel for perpetuating a fraud).
But does anyone give a damn that the general public, all the millions, might be receiving fraudulent information? Some might suggest that disputes such as these should be kept private so as not to shake the public's confidence in Holocaust history, or in the Holocaust historians. But don't you think we have a RESPONSIBILITY not to knowingly feed the public falsehoods or unproven claims disguised as unquestioned facts? Don't you think we have a responsibility to be honest about our research? If not, what makes us any different from the "historians" of the Soviet Union, or Hitler's Germany, who knowingly tailored their research to produce a politically expedient conclusion? When the ends begin justifying the means, watch integrity go flying out the window.
As bad as the public misinformation about Majdanek is, the Stalin-esque purging of Pressac's "Auschwitz; Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers" from the official record is worse. This master-work of historiography, once loudly heralded in the press (see enclosed clippings), is NOW nowhere to be found when references to Pressac are made. A recent article in "Publishers Weekly," detailing a forthcoming U.S. Holocaust Museum book containing 29 original essays from Holocaust scholars including Berenbaum and Pressac, not only neglects to mention Pressac's gas chamber book, but seems to suggest that Pressac's conversion from revisionist to gas chamber believer came only recently, as he was researching his just-published "slim volume" about the Auschwitz crematorium. The entire period of the 1980's, which Pressac spent researching his gas chamber book after his "conversion", is omitted.
Yet scholars around the world continue to use Pressac's gas chamber book (if they're lucky enough to have one of the few copies), mainly because, even if one disagrees with Pressac's conclusions, his book is STILL the best (and the only) single source for the blueprints, construction slips, alteration plans, and inter-office communiques regarding the Auschwitz "gas chambers". Neither side in this debate agrees entirely with Pressac...but for the gas chamber supporters, his book is an embarrassment because it IS so thorough. It is the most thorough work yet produced about the gas chambers, yet Pressac cannot find that elusive objective proof of gassings. So now, apparently, the historians have just decided to pretend the book doesn't exist. I've always referred to the Pressac gas chamber book as the most popular book that never existed!
Four Unanswered Questions About Stutthof
When preparing the original 38 questions, I didn't bother with the tiny Stutthof "gas chamber" because so few people take it seriously anymore. Stutthof was the camp where the Nazis supposedly made the "human soap.". When the soap story was dropped, so was much of the testimony about the Stutthof "gas chamber." However, recently an NBC prime-time news show, "The Crusaders," decided to revive this rarely mentioned "homicidal gas chamber," producing a segment about Stutthof that played up the existence of an intact gas chamber at the camp. This segment of "The Crusaders" has now been adopted as part of California's public school Holocaust-education curriculum. Therefore, I thought a brief overview of, and a few questions about, the Stutthof "gas chamber" were in order
Brief Overview: The Stutthof concentration camp, located 35 km east of Gdansk, was designed for Polish civilians and designated as a "civilian internees camp." The Stutthof "gas chamber," a relatively small building (8 meters long, 3 meters wide, and 2.30 meters high) located next door to the camp crematorium (which was destroyed as the Nazis abandoned the camp, and has been rebuilt by the Poles) has walls soaked both inside and out with the tell-tale blue staining that comes from repeated Zyklon B usage. There is a stove and chimney outside, for heating the interior. Inside, a long clay heating conduit runs the length of one wall. This building was clearly a delousing gas chamber. The Zyklon granules would be placed on the heating conduit, and the stove would be fired up. The conduit would become hot, and the granules would release their gas. The two doors would then be opened for natural ventilation. This is an "old style" German Zyklon B delousing chamber, built before the more modern chambers, like the ones at Dachau, were designed (the newer, more energy efficient chambers came equipped with Zyklon evaporators, which would heat the granules on a kind of hot plate, and blow the gas onto the clothes, mattresses, etc. This was more energy efficient because it was a waste of fuel to heat an ENTIRE ROOM when it was only the ZYKLON GRANULES that needed to be warmed up. These Zyklon evaporators remain at Dachau today, in the delousing chambers of "Barrack X.").
The "evidence" of homicidal usage of the Stutthof gas chamber is a "Zyklon B induction hole" in the roof. We are told that the Zyklon would be poured in through the this hole on the heads of the unsuspecting victims. The roof of this chamber is accessible only via ladder.
Let's pause to read what Pressac has to say about Stutthof:
"It is not known when this gas chamber FOR DELOUSING PRISONERS' EFFECTS (emphasis his) was installed. Its dimensions are close to the standard dimensions of those erected by BOOS or DEGESCH...From 22nd June to the beginning of November 1944, it was used as a HOMICIDAL gas chamber for groups of about 100 people, Zyklon B being poured in through a small opening of 15 cm diameter in the roof, a system apparently introduced on the advice of SS Lieutenant Colonel Rudolf Hoess, former commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau and at that time head of Department D1 of the WVHA-SS (SS Economic Administration Head Office). While the history of this gas chamber is known from TESTIMONIES reported by Father Krzysztof Dunin-Wasowicz, there has been no scientific examination of the "murder weapon" since 1945, which means that we do not know how the chamber functioned as a delousing installation and are unable to provide material proof of its criminal use.
(Pressac cont.) The number of victims is estimated at one or two thousand. The visit (to Stutthof) did not greatly impress us." (Pressac; "Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers" pages 539-540)
The Stutthof Museum personnel agree with Pressac's claim that this was FIRST AND FOREMOST a delousing chamber, used as such for years, only LATER "converted"into a homicidal one.
Now, let's ask some questions, picking up from where we left off in the "38 Questions"
(39) The Stutthof "gas chamber" has a large floor drain right in the middle of the room, DIRECTLY BELOW the "Zyklon B induction hole." Any granules dropped through this hole would automatically go right down the drain. What's more, the floor of this room is DEPRESSED in the middle, where the drain is, so that any water or, in this case, Zyklon granules, would automatically roll into the drain. what would stop the Zyklon granules from going down the drain, since they were being poured into the room directly over this drain? And, if a few granules missed the drain, wouldn't they simply roll, or couldn't the inmates brush them, down the drain?
(40) The roof of this room is low enough so that a tall person could reach up and block the "Zyklon B induction hole." However, the thoughtful Nazis, by installing the heating conduit that runs the length of on wall, have made it possible for ANYONE, of whatever height, to stand on this conduit and block the hole. What would stop the inmates from blocking the "Zyklon B induction hole," especially since they would be EXPECTING foul play (this room was the official Stutthof delousing chamber, known as such by all the inmates. No Stutthof inmate would expect to be given a "shower" in this room, and indeed the Stutthof Museum makes no claims about such a deception (neither do the eyewitnesses)?
(41) Why was this building - a clear "proof" of Nazi crimes, what with its " Zyklon B induction hole," - not DESTROYED as the Nazis evacuated the camp? Amazingly, the crematorium RIGHT NEXT DOOR was blown up, and, in fact, one side of the gas chamber building was actually HIT by shrapnel from the exploding crematorium. Yet the gas chamber was allowed to remain intact, even though, as reported by the Stutthof survivor interviewed on the "Crusaders" TV show, at the end of the war the Nazis were ordered to KILL EVERY INMATE at Stutthof, in order to erase any evidence of the gassings (by killing all the eyewitnesses). For some unknown reason, this order was never carried out, and the Stutthof inmates were evacuated west.
Why would the Nazis BLOW UP the crematorium, yet leave the "homicidal" gas chamber standing? Why would the Nazis decide to KILL EVERY INMATE in order to "cover up" their crimes, yet leave the PHYSICAL EVIDENCE of those crimes standing? Why wouldn't the Nazis AT LEAST cover up the "Zyklon B induction hole," which would serve as CLEAR AND INDISPUTABLE PROOF of homicidal usage (unless we dare to imagine that this hole was put in by the Soviets/Poles, as they ADMIT doing at the building the Nazis abandoned knowing it was soon to fall into Soviet hands. Considering the great pains that the Nazis went through to "cover up" the gassings elsewhere, how hard would it have been to dynamite THIS building along with the crematorium just a few yards away?
(42) Since personal testimony is all we have to go on regarding the homicidal usage of this chamber, and since much of this testimony also mentions the "human soap" - which has long been officially debunked - what evidence do we have that the testimony about the Stutthof homicidal gas chamber is any more reliable than the testimony about the human soap?
I could add one more question (but I won't), something about the fact that the Stutthof gas chamber is located in full view of all the inmates, inmates who were NOT destined for extermination, and not, to a great extent, Jewish. Strangely, the secrecy-obsessed Nazis also seemed obsessed with conducting their homicidal gassings in the most open, noticeable places possible...especially at the non-"extermination" camps (at Mauthausen, another non-extermination camp, the "gas chamber" is right in the middle of the inmate barracks), thus hoping, I suppose, to create tens or hundreds of thousands of "eyewitnesses" to something the Nazis would not even discuss privately in coded transmissions. Go figure.
The following four questions are based on personal meetings I had during my last trip to Europe in October of 1994. In Lublin, Poland, I met with Tomasz Kranz, Curator of the Majdanek State Museum. I spoke at length with Mr. Kranz, who has been Curator for ten years, in his office on the Majdanek concentration camp site, Two weeks later, in a suburb outside Paris, I met with Jean-Claude Pressac, the celebrated Holocaust author who has become perhaps the man most recognized with defending the gas chamber theory. I met with Mr. Pressac in his office, and got to spend roughly six hours discussing gas chambers, Holocaust history, the demands of publishing in the mainstream, and much more.
For the purpose of this list of questions, I have chosen four simple ones based on these meetings.
(43) Majdanek Curator Tomasz Kranz had to admit, after I raised the same questions I've raised in this list, that the biggest Majdanek "gas chamber," chamber #1, was not intended or used homicidally. Big revelation. With the doors, window, and everything else that precludes homicidal usage, this is a conclusion even a five year old child would come to. Although Kranz could offer no evidence for homicidal usage in the other three chambers, chamber #1 was the only one he was willing to completely jettison as a homicidal room. Pressac went further. He is only willing to even CONSIDER homicidal gassings in chamber #3. Of course, he has no evidence. What's more, he admits that the Soviets laid down fake "gas piping" in chamber #3 to give the room the appearance of a homicidal gas chamber. This is certainly in keeping with Soviet precedent regarding the mishandling and faking of important historical evidence. Pressac could offer no REAL evidence for gassings in this room. But my question is: Why does Curator Tomasz Kranz continue to allow this room to be represented to tourists and the world as a homicidal gas chamber, when he privately acknowledges it never was? If there is agreement that this room was never homicidally used, why continue to promote it as a death chamber? If the Majdanek Curator and Europe's most well known Holocaust author express such uncertainty about homicidal usage of this and the other rooms, why are people like me who ask basic questions like these labeled as anti-Semitic irrational cranks? If, as Pressac believes, rooms 1,2 and 4 were not homicidal gas chambers, what evidence is there that anyone was killed in room 3?
(44) At Auschwitz Birkenau, the rooms in Kremas 4 and 5 that are supposed to have been used as homicidal gas chambers all had drains in the floor that led right into the camp sewage system. These floor drains can still be seen today. Since, in these "gas chambers," it is said that the Zyklon pellets were dumped in loose, what stopped the pellets from going down the drain or being kicked or brushed down by the victims? Pressac was aware of this problem. He has tried to prove that the Zyklon pellets would present no problem. He has tried to prove that the Zyklon pellets would present no danger in the camp sewer, since the water would (in his opinion; this is a debatable point) "neutralize" the poison so it wouldn't present a danger when going through Birkenau's large sewage treatment plants. But Pressac misses the point; the question of just how harmful the Zyklon would be in the sewer is SECONDARY to the point that if the Zyklon is IN the sewer that means it's NOT in the gas chamber doing the job the Nazis intended! If the victims can dump the Zyklon into the sewer, that means they themselves won't be gassed. How could these rooms have functioned as homicidal gas chambers?
(45) There is a large square manhole in the floor of the Krema 1 "gas chamber" at the Auschwitz Main Camp. The manhole has a concrete cover with a metal handle. It is possible for anybody of normal or even below-normal strength to lift off the lid, and the manhole is large enough for anyone of any size to climb down. What would stop the victims from climbing down the manhole to either escape the gas chamber via the sewer OR at least escape the gas? And even if escape wasn't possible, what would stop the victims from kicking or brushing the Zyklon B pellets down the manhole and closing the cover? There is something I should mention here, since several times I've talked about the possibility of the victims brushing the pellets down floor drains of in this, the worst case yet, a manhole. Zyklon B can kill a human being quite effectively when its gas is INHALED. It kills through the lungs. It doesn't kill through the skin (unless it is in contact with the skin for a very long period of time and in a very high concentration). Therefore, the pellets could easily be handled by victims in a gas chamber without posing any threat to the victims via absorption through the skin. In fact, a Zyklon mixture was frequently brushed directly onto people's arms and legs during disinfestation procedures at Auschwitz, and Zyklon was also used in a liquid solution to bathe people in for delousing. As for the Zyklon pellets giving off their gas, it should be remembered that Zyklon B begins giving off gas when warmed. The hotter it is, the quicker the evaporation.
Yet Kremas 1 ( and 2 and 3) were not only UNHEATED but partially or completely UNDERGROUND! All three rooms were used or designed as morgues; they were MEANT to be cold all the time. It has never been explained just how the Zyklon was heated, especially in the freezing winter months. The best that the other side can do is say that the body temperatures of the victims warmed the rooms. But that would take time, and the "confession" of Auschwitz Commandant Hoess speaks of a very swift process - herd 'em in, drop down the gas, ventilate the room. No time mentioned to let the victims warm up the room. Zyklon pellets dropped down into a cold room, landing on the cold floor, would not only give off gas slowly, but would be safe to brush down a drain or manhole. What would stop the inmates from doing this? (For the record, there is a floor drain in the Krema 1 "gas chamber" AS WELL as a manhole...but with a manhole of that size, the drain becomes almost irrelevant!)
In 1992 I ran my manhole question past Dr. Franciszek Piper, Senior Curator of the Auschwitz State Museum, and he had no answer. When I ran it by Pressac, he thought I was trying to put one over on him; he didn't believe there WAS a manhole in Krema 1! I was floored that he had never seen it. We argued about this for some time until I had to go through his files and find a picture of Krema 1 and POINT OUT the damn manhole. Now HE was floored. "Over the last ten years I've been to Krema 1 more times than I can possibly count," he said (in French, of course), " and I've never noticed the manhole!"
"The next time you go, Jean-Claude," I responded, "you should look down!" "Ah, that is the problem David," he said. "You look down while I look up." Well, for the record, I look up too. My aim is to notice things, to take these gas chambers seriously; to walk into these rooms and ask three questions:
"How is this gas chamber supposed to have worked?" "What would have happened if it worked that way?," "What evidence is there that it did?"
The mainstream historians gloss over the difficult questions. They have nothing to gain by challenging their own beliefs. As a result, all too often they don't pay attention to the crucial details of their own stories. They come up with their conclusion first, and then they only pay attention to the evidence that supports that conclusion. They don't look at ALL the evidence.
As a result, the mainstream Holocaust historians have only had to explain the problems and discrepancies in their story (like the absence of Zyklon B traces) after revisionists have pointed out these problems. Mainstream Holocaust historians have never tried to explain problems with the gas chamber story willingly; they've always had to be prodded into doing so. (This, by the way, is not a situation unique to Holocaust history. The value of a society where dissent is allowed to exist is that often times it is the existence of two or more opposing sides to an issue that prompts and encourages the search for the truth; each side critiques the other side mercilessly and, therefore, the public is made aware of possible flaws in ALL sides. If a school of thought is insulated from criticism, as Holocaust history is in all the countries where questioning the gas chambers in an illegal and punishable offense, that school of thought can remain unchecked for errors).
As for the manhole, apparently the other side has not yet been able to rationalize its presence in as supposedly homicidal gas chamber. I welcome their attempts. Maybe there's something I'M missing. It doesn't matter to me if one proceeds with the hypothesis that there were homicidal gas chambers, or with the hypothesis that there weren't. As long as we search in good faith for the facts. The only crime is to wish away the difficult questions, pretending they don't exist and slandering the people who do nothing more than ask them.
(46) Another thing I learned from Pressac is that he believes that the Krema 1 "gas chamber" had THREE "Zyklon B induction holes," running in a straight line in the ceiling. But the Auschwitz State Museum believes that there were FOUR holes, running in two lines of two holes. When the Poles and Soviets put holes in the Krema 1 roof after liberation, this is the version they installed; four holes in two lines. This is the version that can be seen today in Krema 1. But Pressac says they're wrong; it was THREE holes in a straight line. Who's right? Were there three holes or four? And how do we know that there were ever ANY holes? There are no holes present in any of the aerial photos, and there were no holes when the Soviets liberated the camp.
The important question is; HOW can such a debate (three holes or four?) among major Holocaust scholars exist in the first place? It is only because hard evidence for gassings at Auschwitz is so lacking that something like this can still be an issue fifty years later. Whatever the evidence for gassings at Krema 1, it is apparently not good ENOUGH evidence to provide a description of the gas chamber that all scholars can agree on. Now, it would be one thing if we had tons of SUPPLEMENTARY evidence (i.e. Zyklon B traces in the walls that were heavier than all the other rooms, evidence of people entering the building en masse and never coming out, a special ventilation system and heating equipment, or German coded transmissions or documents talking about gassings, etc.); then we could at least say "Well, we know there were gassings, we're just not sure about the design of the gas chamber." But there is no supplementary evidence. We have no description of the Krema 1 murder weapon, but we ALSO have no evidence of any murders in Krema 1. Even the best prosecutor in the world would be hard pressed to get a conviction were this case to be tried in any standard American court.
All that we have are testimonies. And just a few. Yet Pressac spends much of his gas chamber book demolishing these testimonies as false. We have the testimony of camp Commandant Hoess, the man who SHOULD have been able to provide us with the best description of the Krema 1 gas chamber, but Pressac, Hilberg, Lipstadt, Chris Browning, and most other Holocaust scholars dismiss his account as unreliable, fabricated, or just plain false. So what's left? Pressac searches in vain for ANY hard evidence to reproduce in his chapter on Kremas 1, and ends up with nothing. As a result, this chapter is perhaps the most awkward in Pressac's book. Pressac begins the chapter by affirming his belief in homicidal gassings in this room, but then goes on to offer no evidence, and what's more he doubts the credibility of the testimonies, which are the only evidence he offers. One is left saying "Jean-Claude Pressac believes in Homicidal gassings in Krema 1...I'm just not sure why."
What I try to do is look at the evidence that calls gassings into question (the manhole, the floor drain, the lack of Zyklon B traces, the absence of documentary evidence, the lack of evidence in the aerial photos, the lack of ventilation, the fact that the room is extremely cold, etc. etc.) and weigh that against any evidence FOR gassings (a few testimonies which the experts themselves doubt). You can see how a debate over the design of this "gas chamber" can still be raging among mainstream historians; it is because of the lack of evidence.
And it is therefore legitimate to ask, "If you don't know whether there were three or four holes, how do you know that there were ANY holes?"
For many (or some) of us that were subject to intensive Holocaust conditioning as kids in American public schools, we saw films of hundreds and thousands of piled bodies from old WWII footage a few times a year - year in, year out. We were told they were Jews that had been murdered, gassed mostly, by the Nazis. I recall seeing my first one of these films in the early 1970’s when I was about nine or ten years old.
It went on for my entire education in the Boston area and then in high school in Columbia, Md. when my family had moved. In 1978 when the NBC television miniseries “Holocaust” was required watching for my social studies class, it seemed perfectly natural that we were expected to sit through four nights of television that even Elie Wiesel called “untrue, offensive, cheap.”
As a kid, I always felt a little sledgehammered after being subjected to those movies in the darkened classroom, surrounded by my fellow students with the teacher sitting in the back to keep an eye on us to make sure we didn’t fool around or otherwise be distracted from the Important Information that was being injected into our still-forming minds. Dark rooms under veil of authority are very conducive to making certain that attention is given to what’s to be taken in.
What was being funneled into our brains was a steady diet of grainy black and white movies of Jews being herded through towns like cattle, bodies being bulldozed into pits, mass trench shootings, prisoners that looked like the walking dead, emaciated corpses piled like firewood. If you had a similar experience in school, you know of what I speak. Then there was usually some kind of after-lesson given by the teacher when we were at our most traumatized. Bad Nazis. Nice teacher.
And we all took it in, without question. Six million Jews died in gas chambers, were made into soap, burned in ovens. Four million Jews died in Auschwitz. Nazis made lampshades out of Jewish skin. Gas chambers in Germany. And thus was the core of my childhood education of the Holocaust. I never questioned what I’d been taught. I had no reason to. Leaving any idea of academia behind in 1980 when high school was over, I went along with my merry little life and to be honest, I didn’t think much about the Holocaust again.
That changed for me in the late 1990’s when I learned, via the internet and my own research afterwards, that the number of dead at Auschwitz had been revised downward from four million to one million, but the overall six million Jewish dead still stood as gospel. Or maybe five million as of now. It was six million no questions asked when I was a kid.
Anyway, over time I also learned that the soap stories had been deprecated, Jews hadn’t been made into lampshades after all and there hadn’t really been any gas chambers on German soil. Having to unlearn this new information was coupled with learning that people were being charged with and going to jail for having the wrong opinion about history when it came to the Holocaust by publicly stating that there was no evidence for mass exterminations of Jews by gas chamber.
Frankly, life was easier before the blinders came off. What had all of these people done to the Holocaust stories of my youth?
We all know what a gas chamber is. It can be defined. We know them from 1930’s gangster flicks, Perry Mason shows, etc. For better or worse, gas chambers have been a meme for decades, even before World War Two. The first person executed by gas chamber in the US was a native born Chinese named Gee Jon in 1924. The last person executed by gas chamber in the US was in 1999, a German national named Walter LaGrand. Life’s funny like that.
It’s difficult to find a hard and fast definition of the term holocaust denial, though the term is used on a daily basis in the international media. As an aside that might have meaning or not, a google search for gas chamber yields fewer results than a google search for holocaust denial. I’ll leave it to the reader to pull that one apart.
So is there evidence of mass extermination of Jews by gas chamber? There’s much eyewitness and anecdotal evidence. There’s Yankel Wiernik’s “A Year In Treblinka”, published in 1945. In it, he claims that 1200 people were put into rooms that were about 400 square feet and gassed. This displays one of the difficulties of anecdotal evidence. Fitting 1200 people in what is essentially a small garage is a little difficult to imagine.
The most approachable analysis I’ve found is David Cole’s “The Truth Behind The Gates Of Auschwitz” (Part I, Part II). Cole’s Forty-Six Important Unanswered Questions Regarding the Nazi Gas Chambers is also helpful. In it, he asks the simply legitimate question, “If you don’t know whether there were three or four holes, how do you know that there were ANY holes?” It should be noted that Cole, who is Jewish, was apparently forced by threat and blackmail by the Jewish Defense League into recanting his research and withdrawing from ever speaking of the Holocaust again.
A quiz:
1. How many Chinese died in World War Two? 2. How many Russians died in World War Two? 3. How many Americans died in World War Two? 4. How many Jews died in World War Two?
You most likely know the answer to #4 without having to look it up. Most of us would have to look up the other answers too. I guess it was more important for us to learn some things rather than others.
It took me until a couple of years ago to realize that our conditioning is so deep that when the programmed individual is asked to consider what evidence exists for gas chambers, what the programmed individual hears is, “No Jews were killed by the Nazis”. That’s exactly how the programming is supposed to work. It makes possible the use of the term ‘Holocaust denier’ to keep the unconditioned sheep out of the fold.
In High American Culture of the 21st Century, there’s few greater curses thrown than that of “Holocaust Denier”. It’s gotten people deported and jailed in foreign countries while multi-billion ripoff artists are sentenced to their mansions.
This conditioning is often protected through an emotional reaction. Many people get downright angry when gas chambers and evidence are brought up in the same sentence. We see this same reaction in people that have an overarching attachment to religious or political systems also. It’s not a rational, reasoned reaction to a rational, reasonable request. For others, the reaction is one of apathy. Apathy protects the conditioning by ensuring that the source of the conditioning won’t be examined and thus, the conditioning remains.
This Holocaust conditioning is the vicegrip of a perception that lends itself to much evil being allowed to happen. By at least examining what one thinks one does or doesn’t know about the Holocaust, that grip is broken just a little bit and perception can be allowed to change rather than dictated to.
“In forging their own brand of totalitarianism in the U.S., the Zionists continue to manipulate the victims of the Nazi holocaust as their chief weapon.” - Alfred Lilienthal
The way Ron Paul tells it, his more than 30 years of speaking and writing about money, inflation, and the Federal Reserve System attracted only limited interest outside libertarian and constitutionalist circles. The subject, and Paul as its spokesman, were scarcely to be found in the media, even—or perhaps especially—on the business networks.
But Paul’s 2008 presidential bid changed that. Suddenly the Fed was on the table for discussion for the first time since Congress established it in 1913. With Paul making the evils of central banking and fiat money a theme of his campaign, the issue took on a vigor that few expected. Even calling for the Fed’s outright abolition was longer unheard of on the television news networks.
When Paul first raised the issue in his campaign, he had no idea what he was tapping into. “I didn’t realize people your age knew so much about money and inflation,” he told a rally at the University of Pittsburgh last year. “But it gets the largest applause at college campuses. I figured the first time it happened [at the University of Southern California] it was an accident. … But then at the University of Michigan, they started to burn Federal Reserve Notes.”
To Paul’s surprise, some of his loudest applause lines involved salvos against the Fed. Chants of “End the Fed!” greeted his denunciations of the economic damage the central bank was unleashing. An underappreciated reason for Paul’s fundraising prowess was his outspoken opposition to the Fed, a subject that had long been off limits in American politics. Eventually, a national organization called End the Fed, with local chapters around the country, gave institutional expression to the issue, sponsoring a series of demonstrations against the central bank in 39 cities last November.
This is a new phenomenon on the Right. The libertarian and conservative think tanks that liberally invoke the names of Austrian School economists like F.A. Hayek have tended to ignore these men’s opposition to central banking, a position too politically incorrect even for those who pride themselves on their willingness to defend unpopular positions. The Ludwig von Mises Institute and the Foundation for Economic Education have been among the handful of exceptions to this rule, providing the scholarly infrastructure to convert what was sometimes an inchoate unease about the Fed among Paul supporters into well-honed arguments.
Unlike in the past, moreover, commentators with high media profiles now defend this view of money and central banking. Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital, may be the best known of these. Schiff foretold the crisis before it happened, including the bankruptcy of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. His books Crash Proof and The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets, both of which have sold well, take an Austrian approach to current conditions. A grassroots movement is even trying to draft Schiff, a resident of Connecticut, to run for U.S. Senate against Chris Dodd in 2010.
Schiff isn’t alone. Famed investor Jim Rogers calls for the abolition of the Fed when he’s a guest on business networks. Indeed, he predicts the Fed’s demise sometime in the next ten years. Another Austrian analyst all over television and the print media is James Grant, editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer. Similarly high-profile is Mish Shedlock, whose Global Economic Trend Analysis blog takes a reliably anti-Fed position.
It’s not surprising that arguments against the Fed are finally resonating. Since the crisis began in 2007, Fed Chair Ben Bernanke has engaged in all manner of emergency activity, much of it unprecedented and of such dubious legality that even some of those who may reject or be unfamiliar with arguments against the Fed have begun to wonder about the unaccountable power this institution wields over the economy.
For example, John Hussman of Hussman Funds accused the Fed of going beyond its legal boundaries when it offered a $30 billion “non-recourse loan” to J.P. Morgan, which was secured by the worst of Bear Stearns’s mortgage debt. The Fed is supposed to provide liquidity to the banking system or shore up the solvency of a non-bank institution. This loan was neither. J.P. Morgan was in no financial trouble: it was “effectively offered a subsidy by the Fed at public expense.”
Shedlock is even more blunt: “The Fed simply does not care whether its actions are illegal or not. The Fed is operating under the principle that it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission. And forgiveness is just another means to the desired power grab it is seeking.”
The most significant argument against the Fed, though, is not political but economic. The Austrian view is that a central bank is not merely unnecessary but harmful. There is no need for a monopoly institution, by means of artificial money creation, to prevent the natural and healthy phenomenon of falling prices. There is likewise no need for a “lender of last resort” for the banking industry any more than for the personal computer industry or the shellfish industry. As long as the banking system is run on sound principles—an unlikely outcome, while there is a central bank with powers to prop up unsound banks—there is no reason for the bankruptcy of one or two major banks to provoke a systemic crisis, as can happen under the Fed system.
Then there are the problems that stem from artificial money creation. Not only do people on fixed incomes suffer from the rising prices that increases in the money supply bring about, but the process of money creation inevitably enriches politically well-connected groups at the expense of everyone else. The powerful are in a position to receive the newly created money first and spend it before prices have commensurately risen. Still other problems are discussed in the major Austrian treatments of money, including Mises’s Human Action and Murray Rothbard’s The Case Against the Fed.
Under a commodity standard, people could save for the future by accumulating gold and silver coins. The coins’ value appreciated over time because of their natural increase in purchasing power, as the relatively slow increase in the production of precious metals was outpaced by the much faster increase in the production of other goods and services. Today, only a fool would try to save for the future by piling up dollar bills. Everyone is forced to enter the financial markets, which are risky even for knowledgeable investors, in order to prevent the value of his retirement savings from vanishing before his eyes.
Austrian business cycle theory, which Paul has made a point of explaining, blames the central bank for the boom-bust cycle. (And yes, it can also account for financial panics that occurred before the Fed was established.) Under fiat money, currency without commodity backing, the central bank can artificially lower interest rates by increasing the supply of money—and thus the funds banks have available to lend—through the banking system. This is supposed to stimulate the economy. What it actually does is mislead investors into embarking on investments that the artificially low rates seem to validate but that cannot be sustained under existing economic conditions. Unprofitable investments are made to seem profitable, and over time the result is the squandering of untold resources in lines of investment that should never have been begun.
If lower interest rates are the result of increased saving by the public, those greater saved resources provide the means with which to see the additional investment through to completion. But the situation is very different when lower interest rates result from the Fed’s creation of new money out of thin air. In that case, lower rates do not reflect an increase in the pool of savings from which investors can draw. Fed tinkering, in other words, does not increase the real stuff in the economy. The additional investment that the lower rates encourage therefore leads the economy down a path that is not sustainable.
That is how the Austrians knew the present bust was coming. The preceding boom had been based not on real factors but on bubble conditions created by the Fed’s artificial credit expansion. It had to end in a bust, as Mises and Hayek said. That’s also what they said in 1928 and 1929, as respectable opinion hastened to assure everyone that business cycles were a thing of the past.
To be sure, while the Fed is slowly but surely becoming an issue for discussion in politics and the media, as yet only a small segment of the population opposes—or indeed knows much about—the central bank. But because this issue is one about which most Americans are lethargic or uninformed, that small and growing segment can influence public life on a scale out of proportion to its numbers. And the presence of this once-excluded point of view makes it harder for the regime to pretend that economic crises have no cause, that no person or institution is to blame for them, and that the federal government and its central bank have the solutions.
Paul is said to be finishing a book on the Federal Reserve for 2009 release. If it should become a bestseller, the profile of the anti-Fed campaign will be raised still higher.
The End the Fed movement likewise is pressing forward. Organizer Steven Vincent says the group is coordinating a series of rallies in 40 cities on April 25, to be followed by an event at the National Press Club at which they will present the fruits of their nationwide petition campaign in support of Congressman Paul’s Federal Reserve Board Abolition Act.
As the economic crisis continues to worsen, it will become harder and harder to portray old-school Keynesianism as “change,” and the potential audience for the Austrian message will only grow. That, one hopes, is a silver lining to the disaster the Fed has unleashed.
AMSTERDAM, Jan 9 (IPS) - On the phone from Gaza, Zahrah Salem shares the news she has just seen, that so many at the White House were “deeply saddened” by the death of the cat India Willie (see picture above). Why, she asks, is nobody at the White House deeply saddened by the death of so many children in Gaza.
After a pause she says, “At least the cat did not die hungry, like the children in Gaza.”
Zahrah Salem, 64, has four children and 15 grandchildren to worry about. Day after day of bombing brings blessing they are still there. “We all sleep in one room,” she says. “So if we die, we die together. What if we die and the children don’t, we don’t want to leave them behind to suffer.”
These days the injuries suffered by this IPS correspondent at the hands of the Israelis on trying to return home to Gaza seem trivial in the face of what is going on in Gaza. And in the face of the fears over the fate of family and friends back home.
From the comfort of a hospital in Amsterdam, thoughts seem focussed day and night on survivors, on who might perhaps be in hospital in Gaza – lucky enough to make it to hospital, lucky enough perhaps to be still there. And on what a very different place a hospital in Gaza can be from one in Amsterdam.
“We do not receive patients, we receive remains,” says Ahmed Abdelrahman, a staff nurse at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The sound of ambulance sirens screams into the phone as we speak. “It is a job sometimes to put limbs together in the morgue, to find out which body part belongs to who.”
Staff risk their lives to save the injured. “We have been shot at many times as we evacuate injured people or collect bodies,” says Abdelrahman. “I have as we speak eight calls from the east side from people who are bleeding, including two women. But our ambulance crew was fired on by the Israelis as they went to help.”
Dr. Mawia Hassanien, head of emergency services at Shifa Hospital says at least 12 emergency workers have been killed and 32 injured. Eleven ambulances have been destroyed.
The injured who are brought to hospital successfully find little treatment possible. The Egyptian authorities have opened the Rafah crossing briefly on a few occasions to allow in medical supplies. But that is a small fraction of what Gaza needs.
Many in Gaza, including Hamas members, say they do not know what to do to stop this. Some scattered groups not under Hamas control continue to fire rockets into Israel. These rockets have killed four and injured 40, and spread serious anxiety among Israelis in Ashkelon, Ashdod, Beersheba, Sderot and some other towns in western Negev.
But the rockets are only an excuse for Israel to destroy the Palestinian structure, Gazans say. An Israeli military spokesman has said the Israeli Defence Forces trained for the attack 18 months at a model of the main city on a desert army base. “Our soldiers know all the back streets where the targets are,” he said.
Abu Ghasam, 42, of Buriej refugee camp, says he cannot understand the Israeli assault, and “why the people being killed are the civilians here, and not the ones launching the rockets.”
Ghasam, father of six, has little time to worry about these questions, though. His main concern is to use a few hours of ceasefire to buy bread for his children. He usually finds bakeries closed. For the safe, hunger is now becoming a greater problem, by the hour.
Zahrah Salem knew people close by who have been killed. She can see the mourning tents. “But I am afraid to go and pay condolences,” she says. “The Israeli planes are hitting us everywhere.”
She can hear them again and again, and she can hear the bombs and missiles come screaming down. But she does not close the window. If the bomb just misses you, there will be the glass splinters.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has accused the Israeli military of "unacceptable" conduct and breaching international humanitarian law after discovering four emaciated children living next to the corpses of their mothers and other adults in bomb-shattered houses in Gaza City.
The ICRC said that it had spent four days seeking Israeli guarantees of safe passage so that it could gain access to the houses in the badly damaged Zaytun neighbourhood of the city. It was finally allowed to send in a rescue team and four Palestine Red Crescent Society ambulances yesterday afternoon and said today that what they found was shocking.
In one house they discovered four small children, alive but too weak to stand, next to the bodies of their dead mothers. In all their were 12 dead bodies lying on mattresses.
In another house they found 15 survivors of the Israeli bombardment, several of them wounded, and in a third, three corpses. At that point they were ordered to leave by Israeli soldiers manning a post some 80 metres away, but they refused to do so.
The children and the wounded had to be taken to the ambulances by donkey cart because earth walls erected by the Israeli army made it impossible to bring the vehicles close enough to the houses. In all, the rescue team removed 18 wounded and 12 others who were extremely exhausted. It took away two corpses and plans to return to fetch 13 more tomorrow.
The ICRC said that it believed there were more wounded sheltering in the ruins of other houses in the same neighbourhood, and in an unusually robust public statement issued by the organisation's Geneva headquarters it demanded that the Israeli military grant it immediate access to search for them.
"This is a shocking incident," Pierre Wettach, the ICRC's head of delegation for Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said. "The Israeli military must have been aware of the situation but did not assist the wounded. Neither did they make it possible for us or the Palestine Red Crescent to assist the wounded."
The ICRC accused the Israeli military of failing to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and remove the wounded, and called the delay in allowing rescue services access unacceptable.
The ICRC's charges were another setback for the Israeli military. On Tuesday it killed more than 40 people in a bomb attack on a UN school in the Gaza Strip that it claimed was being used by a Hamas mortar team, and international aid organisations say that its 13-day offensive is creating a humanitarian catastrophe among Gaza's 1.5 million residents.
The Israel Defence Forces did not respond directly to the charges, but issued a statement that it was battling a terrorist organisation — Hamas — that was deliberately using Palestinian civilians as human shields.
It said the IDF was working closely with international aid organisations during the fighting so that civilians could receive assistance, and continued: "The IDF in no way intentionally targets civilians and has demonstrated its willingness to abort operations to save civilian lives and to risk injury in order to assist innocent civilians.
Any serious allegations made against the IDF's conduct will need to be investigated properly, once such a complaint is received formally, within the constraints of the current military operation."
Our finest young men are attacking Gaza now. Good boys from good homes are doing bad things. Most of them are eloquent, impressive, self-confident, often even highly principled in their own eyes, and on Black Saturday dozens of them set out to bomb some of the targets in our "target bank" for the Gaza Strip.
They set out to bomb the graduation ceremony for young police officers who had found that rare Gaza commodity, a job, massacring them by the dozen. They bombed a mosque, killing five sisters of the Balousha family, the youngest of whom was 4. They bombed a police station, hitting a doctor nearby; she lies in a vegetative state in Shifa Hospital, which is bursting with wounded and dead. They bombed a university that we in Israel call the Palestinian Rafael, the equivalent of Israel's weapons developer, and destroyed student dormitories. They dropped hundreds of bombs out of blue skies free of all resistance.
In four days they killed 375 people. They did not, and could not, distinguish between a Hamas official and his children, between a traffic cop and a Qassam launch operator, between a weapons cache and a health clinic, between the first and second floors of a densely populated apartment building with dozens of children inside. According to reports, about half of the people killed were innocent civilians. We're not complaining about the pilots' accuracy, it cannot be otherwise when the weapon is a plane and the objective is a tiny, crowded strip of land. Our excellent pilots are effectively bullies now. As in training flights, they bomb undisturbed, facing neither an air force nor defense system.
It is hard to judge what they are thinking, how they feel. It's unlikely to be relevant, anyway. They are measured by their actions. In any event, from an altitude of thousands of feet the picture looks as sterile as a Rorschach inkblot. Lock onto the target, press the button and then a black column of smoke. Another "successful hit." None see the effects on the ground of their actions. Their heads must surely be filled with Gaza horror stories - they themselves have never been there - as if there aren't a million and a half people living there who only want to live with a minimum of honor, some of them young like themselves, with dreams of studying, working, raising a family but who have no chance to fulfill their dreams with or without the bombing.
Do the pilots think about them, the children of refugees whose parents and grandparents have already been driven from their lives? Do they think about the thousands of people they have left permanently disabled in a place without a single hospital worthy of the name and no rehabilitation centers at all? Do they think about the burning hatred they are planting not only in Gaza but in other corners of the world amid the horrific images on television?
It was not the pilots who decided to go to war, but they are the subcontractors. The real accounting must be with the decision makers, but the pilots are their partners. When they return home they will be welcomed with all the respect and honor we reserve for them. It appears that not only will no one try to provoke moral questioning among them, but that they are considered the real heroes of this cursed war. The Israel Defense Forces spokesman is already going over the top with praise in his daily briefings for the "wonderful work" they are doing. He too, of course, completely ignores the images from Gaza. After all, these are not sadistic Border Police officers beating up Arabs in the alleys of Nablus and the center of Hebron, or cruel undercover soldiers who shoot their targets point-blank in cold blood. These, as we have said, are our finest young men.
Maybe if they were to confront the results of their "wonderful work" even once they would regret their decisions, they would reconsider the effects of their actions. If they were to go just once to Jerusalem's Alyn Hospital Pediatric and Adolescent Rehabilitation Center, where for nearly three years Marya Aman, 7, has been hospitalized - she is a quadriplegic who runs her wheelchair, and her life, with her chin - they would be shocked. This adorable little girl was hit by a missile in Gaza that killed almost her entire family, the handiwork of our pilots.
But all of this is well hidden from the pilots' eyes. They are only doing their job, as the saying goes, only following orders like bombing machines. In the past few days they have excelled at this, and the results are there for the entire world to see. Gaza is licking its wounds, just like Lebanon before it, and almost no one pauses for a moment to ask whether all this is necessary, or unavoidable, or whether it contributes to Israel's security and moral image. Is it really the case that our pilots return safely to base, or are they in fact returning to them as callous, cruel and blind people?
Gideon Levy
Gideon Levy is an Israeli journalist for the Haaretz newspaper, where he is also an editorial board member. He is a prominent left-wing commentator. He formerly served as spokesman for Shimon Peres from 1978 and 1982.
When Muntazer al-Zaidi, an Iraqi journalist, shouted, "It is the farewell kiss, you dog" to Bush and threw him his shoes during a news conference in Baghdad, the curtain of hypocrisy fell and the ugly emperor stood naked in front of the world.
Those shoes however were not aimed only to a man who should be - by his own standards - hanged, together with his entire junta of mass murderers; the Iraqi hero hit to the face all those responsible for the Iraq genocide and its ongoing denial; an endless army of politicians, diplomats, generals, businessmen, journalists, intellectuals and pimps who've helped to carry out the crime of the century. Shoes for all!
Shoes for the United Nations that instead of protecting one of its members from the supreme international crime that organization has been founded to prevent, collaborated with the occupation and its crimes.
Shoes also for the lib-left intelligentsia, the anti-war movement's politburo, the human rights paladins and the court of eunuchs who have worked as gatekeeper of dissent and helped to sell the products of the crime of the century; the supporters of the "political process", of the sectarian Quisling government, of the militias of drillers and all those who rejoiced for the capture and lynching of Saddam Hussein and his government. Shoes for all!
Shoes for Human Rights Watch that contributed to the propaganda campaign that made possible the invasion of Iraq, rejoiced and praised the US occupation for the capture of its president and still keep denying the Iraq genocide.
Shoes for Iraq Body Count that's made possible the denial of the Iraq genocide by its perpetrators and their propaganda apparatus.
A shoe also for Juan Cole; in his Informed Comment blog the Western anti-war movement's icon and Middle East "expert" presented the al-Zaidi's heroic act juxtaposing two BBC articles:
If you search shoes and Iraq, here is how Google shows two BBC stories on December 14, five years apart (they came up together like this at the top of my search):
BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Iraqis celebrate Saddam capture Dec 14, 2003 ... women ululated and crowds beat pictures of Saddam with shoes. ... where the Saddam statue was toppled at the end of the war, ... news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3317637.stm - 46k
BBC NEWS | Middle East | Shoes thrown at Bush on Iraq trip Dec 14, 2008 ... President Bush's farewell visit to Iraq is marred by an incident in which two shoes are thrown at him during a news conference. news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7782422.stm - 8 hours ago
It's really a pity that Cole couldn't find a third BBC article about shoes on Google, The day Saddam's statue fell:
"Down, down, Saddam," said one man, frenziedly interrupting my piece to camera so we should see him use his shoe to repeatedly strike the face of the statue, which had come down a few moments earlier.
Of course in that case even Juan Cole should have explained (to) his readers that that event, the pulling down of Saddam Hussein's statue, was a staged media event organized by the US occupation and its stooges...
Appalling, even for Western propaganda's standards. Appalling but not surprising. It was Juan Cole after all who supported and then justified the vicious military campaign against Fallujah, "there were very bad characters there".
It was Juan Cole who helped to sell the lynching of the legitimate president of Iraq even a few hours before that horror show took place.
Appalling but not surprising; Juan Cole has always been biased against the Sunni Iraqi community and helped to sell his readers the New Iraq.
Back to the brave Iraqi journalist Montadhar Al-Zaydi; he has shown to the world the emperor is naked. He's been now taken hostage in his own country by the sectarian Quisling government of the Green Zone. Not only should he be released immediately; he must be honoured by any decent human being as a hero.
There was chanting, speeches and an impressive US flag burning outside Government House where Rice was meeting with prime minister Helen Clark and foreign affairs minister Winston Peters. The speeches focused on Rice's support for the illegal and immoral war in Iraq, as well as the wider and more nonsensical 'War on Terror'; her sanctioning of torture and instrumental role in setting up Guantanamo Bay; and on what a bad idea a free trade agreement with the US would be. Then the crowd relocated to the Langham Hotel, where Rice met with leader of the parliamentary opposition, John Key.
Auckland University Students Association had to withdraw the bounty it placed on the head of Condoleezza Rice two days earlier, under threat of legal action. However, the students association at Victoria University in Wellington doubled the price, offering $10,000 for a successful citizen's arrest. Although several people turned up to the demo with handcuffs, the chance to nab Rice didn't present itself. Police refused to cooperate in the arrest of this war criminal, giving the irrelevant excuse that she is a visiting dignitary.
Police had planned to limit protest at the Langham hotel by keeping protesters on the opposite side of the road, behind shiny new barricades that had obviously been bought specially for the occasion. What they hadn't planned for was a busload of protesters being dropped off at the bus stop outside the hotel. After fifteen minutes of chanting and yelling by protestors, the police claimed that standing on the public footpath outside the hotel, was a 'safety risk.' When protesters refused to leave, the police violently forced them off the sidewalk and out onto the road. Protesters were shoved, punched and thrown to the street and pain compliance holds used on several protesters to get them to move. Several were punched in the face, including veteran activist John Minto who was shoved to the ground by several officers, smashing and breaking the megaphone he was chanting through. Two protesters were arrested and one man was left bleeding from the neck and wrist.
A mysterious blonde paid a visit to a petrol station shop in the small eastern German town of Doemitz on Sunday-wearing nothing but a pair of golden stilettos and a thin gold bracelet.
The tall, slender woman strolled into the shop in the town of Doemitz on the warm afternoon and bought cigarettes, petrol station employee Ines Swoboda told Reuters on Monday.
"I wasn't surprised because she's come in naked before -- she's a very nice woman," Swoboda said, adding none of the other customers were bothered. The woman could have faced charges of creating a public disturbance if anyone had complained.
A quick-witted customer did, however, snap pictures of the woman believed to be about 30 years old as she walked back to a waiting Ferrari and climbed into the passenger seat. Several of those photos appeared in the German media on Monday.
TSKHINVALI, Georgia — It is not easy for Ireya Alborova to root through the events that cracked this city in half, but one small bright memory stands out from 1989, when she glanced at the building across the street from her high school and spotted a flag. Ireya Alborova lived in Tskhinvali, in the South Ossetian enclave in Georgia, until 2001. She returned for a visit last month.
Ms. Alborova, talking with friends, grew up in a family of Georgians and Ossetians. Mixed families were common in Tskhinvali until the Soviet Union collapsed, and nationalism swelled.
It was a small Georgian flag, fixed in an attic window. Ms. Alborova was an unruly 15-year-old, preoccupied with her friends and her classes, and she took it in — a small piece of information — and kept walking. But now she thinks of it as the first signal of what was coming.
Most of the world now knows what happened: South Ossetians and Georgians began a drawn-out war to control this sleepy valley, where the main feature is a road that cuts through the Caucasian ridge into Russia. That flared into a global standoff last month, when Georgia pounded Tskhinvali, the capital of the South Ossetian enclave, with rocket fire and Russian troops poured across the border in response.
But for Ms. Alborova’s family, which is partly Georgian but wound up on the Ossetian side of the conflict, the crucial event took place during the last months of the Soviet Union, when the fabric of a multiethnic society tore apart with breathtaking speed. For the past 18 years, in a city encircled by Georgian positions, the family and its neighbors have been reliving the rifts and betrayals of that period.
Her Aunt Fuza’s neighbor, a Georgian woman, crossed ethnic lines to pass on a warning that an attack on Ossetians was planned — and then disappeared. A checkpoint appeared between Tskhinvali and her mother’s ancestral village, cutting the Alborovas off from their Georgian relatives. Construction suddenly halted on a huge supermarket being built near their apartment 18 years ago, and not a day’s work has been done since then.
Its foundation was eventually picked apart to build trenches. And the citizens of Tskhinvali became a resistance.
“It’s not a question of whether you choose to or not,” said Ms. Alborova, who is now 34 and lives in Toulouse, France. “Sometimes you are obliged. In some situations you don’t choose anything.”
Tskhinvali is a city of low-slung, sand-colored buildings suspended between urban and rural life. Roosters crow in the cool of the morning, and almost every house has its own grape arbor, used to make sweet pink wines that are stored in plastic soda bottles and brought out for the slightest occasion. There were also monumental Stalinist-era apartment buildings where the elite lived, and a grand neoclassical theater.
Ms. Alborova practically grew up in that theater. Her mother, Medeya, was Georgian. (Though her mother’s mother had been Ossetian, children in the Caucasus take their father’s ethnicity.) Medeya met Gelim Alborov in a state folk dancing troupe, and when they married in the 1970s, unions of Georgians and Ossetians were still unremarkable.
To a teenager’s eyes, the two ethnic groups were woven together inextricably. Children in Ms. Alborova’s class were given their choice of language for classroom use, and though most of them were Ossetian, 28 out of 32 opted to study Georgian.
“Our teacher was embarrassed,” Ms. Alborova said. “No one wanted to learn Ossetian.”
In the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, some 50 miles to the southeast, Georgia’s first post-Soviet leader was emerging. Zviad Gamsakhurdia, a longtime anti-Soviet dissident, based his campaign for the presidency on a vaulting Georgian nationalism — an idea powerful enough to fill the vacuum left by Communism’s collapse.
The platform, known as Georgia for the Georgians, cast ethnic Georgians, who made up 70 percent of the population, as the country’s true masters. Mr. Gamsakhurdia derided South Ossetians as newcomers, saying they had arrived only 600 years ago and as tools of the Soviet Union.
On the street in Tskhinvali, small changes began to appear.
Ms. Alborova’s aunt was exasperated to go to the store and see that pasta manufactured in Russia had been put in packages labeled with Georgian script. Her neighbor Emma Gasiyeva kept hearing slogans: “Brush them out with a broom!” and “Who are the guests, and who are the hosts?” a reference to the theory that Ossetians had been brought to the area as agricultural workers.
In 1989, Ms. Alborova was 15, and she saw only shadows. She heard that her Georgian classmates were gathering for some kind of meeting, but she was not invited. “They stopped talking to us,” she said of her Georgian neighbors. “It was done very quickly.”
Over the next three years, Tskhinvali became something like Belfast in Northern Ireland.
The government in Tbilisi established Georgian as the country’s principal language, enraging the Ossetians, whose first two languages were Russian and Ossetian. A few months later, more than 10,000 Georgian demonstrators were transported to Tskhinvali in buses and encircled the city, until they were repelled by Ossetian irregulars and Soviet troops. A true war began in 1991, when thousands of Georgian soldiers entered Tskhinvali. The city was shelled almost nightly from the Georgian-held highlands, and Medeya Alborova recalls holding pillows over her teenage daughters’ heads, as if that could protect them.
When Mrs. Alborova got to Tbilisi to see her relatives, it was like stepping into a parallel universe. She sat with them watching news on Georgian television, as the announcer recited a litany of crimes committed by Ossetians against Georgians. At times, she said, she was not sure she was on the right side of the conflict.
But the years made all of them harder. Even after a cease-fire in 1992, Tskhinvali was isolated from the Georgian territory around it, and accounts of atrocities against Ossetians — rapes and grisly killings — circulated endlessly.
Mothers, who wield enormous power in this society, urged their sons to fight.
But Ms. Alborova found a way to leave, through a scholarship to study in France. She arrived in Toulouse in 2001 and took in the town with amazement; people were so focused on pleasure. She replayed her memories from Tskhinvali, sealed off from the bright world that surrounded her.
“I understood that I had lost 10 years of my life,” she said.
Ms. Alborova returned to Tskhinvali on Aug. 24 with butterflies in her stomach. She had expected physical damage, and it was there: bullet holes pockmarked virtually every building. But what surprised her were the people. Not many of them were left, and those who remained seemed damaged.
Soon after her return, Ms. Alborova was taken aback when a friend asked her if she could kill President Mikheil Saakashvili if he were standing in front of her. A family friend, who greeted Ms. Alborova affectionately on Karl Marx Street, turned icy when asked about Georgians.
“They have poison in their blood,” said the woman, Katya Kharebova, 60.
Many in Tskhinvali say they would welcome the return of their Georgian neighbors. Still, it is difficult to imagine how long it will be before these people will live together again, much less intermarry. When history sets down the consequences of what happened on Aug. 7, the death of a neighborhood will not be recorded.
Indeed, in 20 years, it may be hard to find Georgians and Ossetians in this area who can talk to each other at all. Ms. Alborova’s nieces, who live in Russia with her sister, are the first generation of her family that does not speak Georgian. Her mother shrugged, when asked about it.
In a classic example of self-sabotage ~ John McCain has just disqualified himself from serious consideration for the Presidency with his irresponsible choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate to the extent that this Republican ticket is not only being laughed at but openly ridiculed ~ especially by women.
John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin raises an important question of not only McCain's intelligence but also his emotional stability at his age of 72.
Peter Wallsten, The Los Angeles Times asks the same question " For a candidate known to possess a quick temper and an unpredictable political streak, the decision raises questions about how McCain would lead ~ whether his decisions would flow from careful deliberations or gut checks in which short-term considerations or feelings outweigh the long view." http://www.truthout.org/article/risky-palin-pick-raises-questions-about-mccain
Some important questions need to be asked now ~
1. How closely did John McCain vet this choice ?
He met Sarah Palin once at a meeting. They spoke a second time, last Sunday, when he called her about being vice-president. Then he offered her the position. " McCain met Palin once before yesterday," MSNBC, August 29, 2008 http://www.moveon.org/r?r=21119&;id=13661-1736303-WOZKpzx&t=8
2. How do the Alaskans feel about McCain's choice ~ particularly women ?
She is really just a mayor from a small town outside Anchorage who has been a governor for only 1.5 years, and has ZERO national and international experience. I shudder to think that she could be the person taking that 3AM call on the White House hotline, and the one who could potentially be charged with leading the US in the volatile international scene that exists today. Rose M., Fairbanks, AK
She is VERY, VERY conservative, and far from perfect. She's a hunter and fisherwoman, but votes against the environment again and again. She ran on ethics reform, but is currently under investigation for several charges involving hiring and firing of state officials. She has NO experience beyond Alaska. Christine B., Denali Park, AK
As an Alaskan and a feminist, I am beyond words at this announcement. Palin is not a feminist, and she is not the reformer she claims to be. Karen L., Anchorage, AK
Alaskans, collectively, are just as stunned as the rest of the nation. She is doing well running our State, but is totally inexperienced on the national level, and very much unequipped to run the nation, if it came to that. She is as far right as one can get, which has already been communicated on the news. In our office of thirty employees (dems, republicans, and nonpartisans), not one person feels she is ready for the V.P. position. Sherry C., Anchorage, AK
She's vehemently anti-choice and doesn't care about protecting our natural resources, even though she has worked as a fisherman. McCain chose her to pick up the Hillary voters, but Palin is no Hillary. Marina L., Juneau, AK
I think she's far too inexperienced to be in this position. I'm all for a woman in the White House, but not one who hasn't done anything to deserve it. There are far many other women who have worked their way up and have much more experience that would have been better choices. This is a patronizing decision on John McCain's part- and insulting to females everywhere that he would assume he'll get our vote by putting "A Woman" in that position.Jennifer M., Anchorage, AK
Finally, Katha Pollitt, The Nation, sums up why Palin is the wrong person for the job ~ " Here's the reality: Palin is a rightwing-christian anti-choice extremist who opposes abortion for any reason whasoever, except to save the life of the girl or woman. No exception even for rape, incest, or the health of the woman. No exception for a ten-year-old, a woman carrying a fetus with no chance of life, a woman on the edge of suicide-- let alone the woman who is not ready to be a parent, who is escaping domestic violence, who is already stretched to the limit as a single mother. She wants to force over one million women and girls a year to give birth against their will and judgment. She wants to use the magnificent freedom the women's movement has won for her at tremendous cost and struggle ~ the movement that won her the right to run those marathons and run Alaska ~ to take away the freedom of every other woman in the country. http://www.thenation.com/blogs/anotherthing/351330/sarah_palin_wrong_woman_for_the_job
So, McCain has apparently disqualified himself from serious consideration for President by underestimating the intelligence of not only Republicans but women in particular ~ which leaves him fair game for the ridicule which is now following his grizzly error.
Here is Bill Mayer having a field day with the McCain / Palin ticket as seen in this five minute clip ~ http://www.politicalforum.com/elections-campaigns/46683-bill-maher-has-field-day-mccain-palin.html
By
Allen L Roland http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2008/08/31.html
Freelance Online columnist and psychotherapist. Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations ( allen@allenroland.com )
The Trilateral Commission was founded in 1973 by David Rockefeller as an off-shoot of the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR). David Rockefeller was chairman of the CFR in 1970 and subsequently became the founding chairman of the Trilateral Commission. Soon the membership of the Commission had grown to 300 members, including prominent political figures like Zbigniew Brzezinski. Most members of the Trilateral Commission are bankers, media moguls, or corporate CEOs, primarily from North America, Europe and Japan, while all members of the CFR are U.S. Citizens.
The Commission seeks to extend its influence abroad and is careful to avoid the scrutiny of congressional investigations. The CFR on the other hand, focuses on the control of American media.
When American media discuss globalism, they rarely mention that the Trilateral Commission sets most global economic goals, primary among them being the creation of a one-world system of trade. It is basically a form of fascism in which global corporations and their elite CEOs determine the policies and direction of world governments. The creation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank after World War II was intended to encourage Third World countries to borrow money from wealthy nations, so long as they agreed to the imposition of a wide range of “structural adjustment policies.” Any nation borrowing money from either organization would not be allowed to nationalize its natural resources and would be unable to prevent foreign corporations from buying or controlling those resources.
Shortly before World War II, Hjalmer Schacht, a German banker, toured the United States soliciting American corporate support for Hitler’s new fascist state. U.S. corporations not only agreed to support Germany against the socialist economic system of the Soviet Union, but also declared their opposition to the strong labor movement arising in the United States and Europe.
General Motors was prominent among the corporations that supported the Nazi government, investing $20 million in industries owned or controlled by Herman Goering and other Nazi officials. Other US multinational corporations that profited from and supported Hitler’s industrial war machine included General Electric, Standard Oil, Texaco, International Harvester, ITT and IBM. Today, Standard Oil of New York is unabashed in honoring its chemical cartel that manufactured Zyklon-B, the poison gas used by the Nazi gas chambers. (1)
Among the eminent business leaders backing these multinational corporations were the Rockefellers and Prescott Bush, father of George Bush and grandfather of George W. Bush. Prescott Bush worked with his father-in-law, George Herbert Walker, in the family firm Union Banking Corporation to raise $50 million for the Nazi government by selling German bonds to American investors from 1924 to 1930.
Even though the United States helped to defeat Nazi Germany in World War II, many of the powerful elite families continued to support Hitler’s fascist ideology after the war. John Rockefeller III was an uncritical believer in the doctrine of Thomas Robert Malthus, who claimed that population always increased at a geometric rate while food supply increased at the slower arithmetic rate. Malthus therefore concluded that population growth had to be rigidly controlled. Today, his theory is widely criticized for failing to take into account the vast technological advances in agriculture and food production.
Rockefeller also accepted Hitler’s concept of an Aryan race, leading him to propose population control on the poor and people of color, whom he believed were producing children of inferior intelligence. In an effort to support such views, the Rockefeller family became involved with Eugenics, a fascist doctrine that advocated breeding a superior race by eliminating the mentally ill, physically handicapped, and racially inferior.
During the 1920’s, anthropologist Franz Boaz helped to combat racial prejudice more than any of his contemporaries. Following in his steps was his young protégé, Margaret Mead, who went on to establish that nurture, not nature, was the primary determinant of human health and mental development. Their work showed that Eugenics was based on ideology, not science. The legitimate science of genetics emerged from the ashes of Eugenics, but even today, many geneticists are members of Eugenics societies.
Despite the demise of Eugenics, the theory of over-population remains a common political argument. It has been suggested by Henry Kissinger, a stout member of the Trilateral Commission, that countries that do not control their population should suffer sanctions and the human misery that accompanies them.
The US Congress has supported these early population concepts introduced by Rockefeller’s Foundation. In March 1970, Congress set up a “Commission on Population Growth and the American Future.” The commission included representatives from USAID, the State Department, and the Department of Agriculture, but CIA and Pentagon officials drew up the agenda. “Their objectives were not to assist developing countries, but as promoted by the Trilateral Commission, to curb world population with a view to serving US strategic and national security interests,” notes author Michel Chossudovsky.(2)
In 2007, more than 100 million tons of grain were used to make ethanol, which contributed to high global food prices and subsequent hunger and starvation. During this same year, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization stated that there had been a record grain harvest, suggesting that there is enough food in the world to feed everyone. Indeed, over the last twenty years, food production has risen steadily at over two percent a year, while the rate of population growth has dropped to 1.4 percent a year. Access to food should be viewed as a fundamental human right, but corporations regard it only as a commodity to be sold for profit. No amount of technological progress or increase in food production can overcome corporate greed. The corporations ignore basic human needs, seeking to control world resources by encouraging the US government to build more and more military bases around the world. Presently, the US has 1000 such bases.
Under the Clinton administration, Yugoslavia was dismembered in order to advance American interests. In particular, the former Serbian province of Kosovo was occupied by U.S. troops in order to build Camp Bondsteel, among the largest military bases ever created by the United States. It will double as Kosovo’s largest prison, where prisoners can be held indefinitely without charges and without defense attorneys.(3)
Another major reason for building Camp Bondsteel was to provide protection for an oil pipeline to be built to the Caspian Sea. The Caspian holds some 50 billion gallons of oil, tempting foreign intervention in the Balkans. In an attempt to control Caspian oil, NATO and US troops have been sent to the Georgia.
As Latin America asserts its independence from the odious Monroe Doctrine, its progressive leaders face increasing American pressure and overt threats. These new leaders no longer rely on the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank. Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic have become members of the Bolivian Alternative for Latin America. This organization emphasizes local energy development and has become the bank of the South. This bank will not operate as a profit driven institution, but as a financial organization that will consider the economic needs of each borrower country.
In an effort to break up this new political organization in Latin America, the US has provided six billion dollars to Alvaro Uribe, President of Columbia, with the understanding that a US military base would follow. The base would be placed in La Guay, a region spanning Northeast Columbia and Northwest Venezuela, a clear threat to the Chavez government in Venezuela.
As in the Caucasus and Latin America, Africa is faced with American military expansion through AFRICOM. AFRICOM is the acronym for the US military command post planned for Sub-Sahara Africa. As pointed out by the members of the National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL), AFRICOM will infringe on the rights of African states and will violate international law that protects the sovereignty of nations. African leaders are well aware that AFRICOM is intended to exploit Africa’s national resources.
It has become increasingly clear that the US military has been stretched thin, with insufficient forces to fight simultaneous wars and maintain the vast military bases it is establishing around the world. Responding to this problem, Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense, and Vice President Dick Cheney have turned to private military forces. Blackwater, a well-paid mercenary army, has become the world’s most powerful private military corporation. Troops for Blackwater are recruited from countries like the Philippines, Nepal, Columbia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, Peru, and Chili. Some 60 former commandos have been recruited from the remnants of the army of former Chilean dictator Augusta Pinochet. They now serve as part of Blackwater’s fighting forces. Other mercenary armies available to the highest bidder include Amo Group, Eunyo, Hart Security, and the Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI). (4)
In early August 1995, under former President Clinton, the MPRI mercenaries were sent to Croatia to train and assist the Croatian military in expelling ethnic Serbs from their villages in the Krajina, an area in Croatia.
American military bases are proliferating around the world like mushrooms. Among the more recent are the bases in Romania, Poland, Bulgaria, Pakistan, India, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Morocco, Tunis, Algeria, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.(5) New bases are presently under construction in Eurasia along the borders of Russia and in areas close to China. The earlier Clinton Doctrine proclaimed that the United States has the unilateral right to use military force to protect markets and resources. Author Michael Swank says the Clinton Doctrine is taken for granted today. He explains, “With markets and resources we have a right to make sure that we control them, which is logical on the principle that we own the world anyway so of course we have that right.” (6)
Dr. Sheldon Wolin, emeritus professor of politics at Princeton University, states that under George Bush the United States has finally achieved an official ideology of imperial expansion comparable to that of Nazi Germany.(7)
The US policy of dividing up countries like Yugoslavia has caused concern in the Middle East, Russia and China. Today, Russia is well aware that the US and NATO hope to divide Russia into three regions, as described in Zbigniew Bryzinski’s book, The Grand Chessboard: Western Russia would be integrated into Europe; Siberia would be separated from Russia; and the Asian republics would be given independence. Both Russia and China are concerned about the relentless expansion of NATO toward their borders.
The military bases spread out over the world have done very little to aid the growth of markets for the US. Taxpayer money funds not only America’s military bases, but the corporations that run them. The current economic depression and the steadily growing public debt, now exceeding nine trillion dollars, has harmed the US social infrastructure in areas like public education and health care. It has also caused the US to lose its competitiveness in manufacturing products to meet civilian needs. Simultaneously, the US has lost international markets to China, India, Russia, and some EU countries.
On June 15, 2001, China, Russia and four of their central Asian neighbors, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, established the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a new regional group pursuing security and cooperation. The SCO is gaining influence internationally as more and more nations seek to join the group. Mongolia, Pakistan, Iran and India hold observer status, and nations as diverse as Bangladesh, Belarus, Nepal and the Philippines have expressed interest in affiliating with the SCO. (8)
Yevgeny Primakov, head of Russian trade and industry, has declared that the global economy no longer has a single undisputed leader. Russia and China, under the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, have worked to create a multi-polar world.
In May, 2008, Russia hosted the first meeting of BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China), bringing together four nations that are home to forty percent of humanity and representing the fastest growing emerging economies in the world. BRIC is being built on the foundation of a successful trilateral collaboration known as RIC (Russia, India and China).
Anthony Ling, managing director of Goldman Sachs International, noting the rising power of the four BRIC countries, characterizes them as “the new economic tigers.” The US is now lagging behind them in terms of the percentage of energy companys world wide. (9)
The new economic power exercised by BRIC and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization has created a new balance in world politics. The SCO has fostered economic and investment cooperation, including joint projects in the fuel and energy sectors, agriculture, and other spheres. The nations within the SCO have established relations with international bodies, including the United Nations, the European Union, the Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN), and the Islamic Conference.
In October, 2007, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), consisting of the presidents of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhatan, Ky7rgistan, Russia, and Tajikistan signed an agreement with the SCO to broaden cooperation on issues of security, crime, and drug trafficking. The major purpose of this agreement was to reaffirm that all participating states will be protected from the foreign threats. “Signatories would not be able to join other military alliances or other groups of states, while aggression against one signatory would be perceived as an aggression against all.”(10) The CSTO, an observer organization of the United Nations, offered aid and assistance in the reconstruction of Afghanistan, but NATO refused, indicating that they would rely instead on an expanded military presence. (11)
Russia and China feel that their union with SCO, CSTO and BRIC proves that a uni-polar world is out of date, and that a multi-polar world, based on cooperation and mutual support rather than competition and intimidation, will become the world’s standard.
Well, Obama has just won the Democratic Party's presidential nomination and there may be quite some, that'll love to drive a knife through his back. I consider recent events a dress rehearsal-flying a kite, as Americans are wont to say. We are being sensitized for some major event in the course of American history, I smell so much gun powder. The charismatic Senator from Illinois, just made history and Jessie Jackson wasn't part of it but look how 'you-can't-say-I-did-it' sweet the Clintons are. The man, Jessie, let his pettiness exclude him from history as Hillary made cock-sure her name glowed in legend. Don't think it, say it-JEALOUS! Worked all my life towards that apex and some toddler crawls out of the woodwork...
A lot of people uncertain about Obama do know, deep in their hearts, come what may, there'll probably never be another like him. That there are interesting times ahead for America. In so many ways, I'm happy for him, happy for America... but sad. Sad because I worry. I worry for Obama's longevity and I worry for America's unpredictability.
Still, I pray that Obama gets it right, for America to heal itself... now just sit back and listen to Bill Clinton's taste-the-sugar speech.
The Morality of Power Politics; between a political buffoon and realpolitik
About a year ago, the Bush administration and the neocon babble-ocracy began touting Vladimir Putin as America's next Man We Love to Hate. This is odd, since by nearly all standards, Mr. Putin is the most successful neocon on the planet. Or perhaps it's jealousy. Since taking power in 2000, Mr. Putin's Russia has dodged chaos, seen its GDP increase six-fold, its poverty fall by half, average monthly real wages rise by 150% and, with the invasion of Georgia, demonstrated to the world that it can no longer be baited, humiliated or ignored without consequences.
In politics, international politics especially, the standard is not perfection, it's the alternative. Putin's no Stalin, either at home or abroad. Nor is he the new tsar. He's a Russian authoritarian, in some ways an autocrat, who is leaving his country better than he found it.
Would that the accomplishments of Mr. Bush and his (and Rupert Murdoch's) neocon minions and shills might receive the same evaluation. But they can't. Mr. Bush will go down in history as our worst president ever in terms of what he squandered, and among the worst in terms of criminality. The neocons have been proven wrong so often that, were they physicians or attorneys or plumbers, they'd have their licenses revoked. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin is currently the most successful leader around and in one very important way, among the most moral and humane.
For in power politics, it is extremely moral to know when to stop and profoundly immoral to posture and preen and make promises you can't keep and issue threats you can't back up.
We shall return to Mr. Putin in a bit. For now, it's necessary to review neoconservatism in its American context, then show why and how they've brought us only ruin...while Russia begins a resurgence that, if properly understood and acknowledged, can only benefit the world.
The present generation of American neocons believes, like many of us, that America is the greatest country on earth. To them, however, the greatest country on earth has to have an empire and a Purpose sufficient to justify whatever we want to do. In fact, for them, without a Mission, America isn't even America. Let's go thump someone and call it spreading democracy, "benevolent hegemony" or whatever. It'll be great fun and they'll thank us later. Or so the neocons told us.
American neocons have a long relationship with Russia, a viscerally hostile relationship that goes back to the Cold War. Sadly, it's a relationship they'd like to revive, now that Saddam's no longer available, Osama's gone missing and bombing Iran lacks popular sizzle.
It's a hostility few Americans have ever shared. Throughout the 20th century, the vast majority of Americans believed that we had no beef (or borscht) with Russia per se, and certainly not with its people. When the Romanov monarchy collapsed in 1917, we cheered Russia's ascent to democracy...and then did nothing to help. When the Bolsheviks took power, we began eighty years of proclaiming that Russia was not the problem. All they had to do was get rid of communism and everything between us would be copasetic. After all, we'd never fought each other (few Americans today know that we landed troops in the Russian far east in 1918, ostensibly and ineffectually to aid Bolshevism's enemies, and kept them there for two years). We'd even been allies during World War II. Nor did we have any obvious geographical or economic conflicts. It was just that darn Communism.
The American neocon movement was born in the aftermath of Vietnam. Its founding generation was composed largely of former liberals and Leftists, even a few cafeteria Trotskyites. Some had drifted away from communism in horror at the excesses of the 1930s, or during the 1950s when the full extent of those excesses began to be known. Many were conventional liberals who broke with the Old Left over Vietnam, which they supported, and with the New Left, whose anti-Vietnam antics they found frivolous, self-centered, self-righteous and self-interested. The neocon movement coalesced during the Carter administration and attained its first real influence during the Reagan years.
The neocons were not traditional conservatives. Some remained unrepentant New Dealers, when they bothered to consider domestic issues at all. They were primarily Manhattan and Beltway types, heavily Jewish, with little use for the "paleocons"-the Old Guard William F. Buckley crowd and Die Hard segregationists, or with the rising Sunbelt evangelicals. The paleocons and Sunbelt types, for their part, returned the sentiment.
The movement came of age with Ronald Reagan and it had but one overriding purpose: win the Cold War. A few senior neocons, such as movement "Godfather" Irving Kristol, took a broader view.
His stated purpose was "to convert the Republican Party, and American conservatism in general, against their respective wills, into a new kind of conservative politics suitable to governing a modern democracy." But foreign policy was always Job One, and the senior neocons included hard liners such as Henry "Scoop" Jackson of Washington and Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, both Democratic Senators, as well as former Democrat Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Ambassador to the UN under the Reagan Administration. The bipartisan nature of these elder neocons made them very useful to Ronald Reagan, who wisely never got in bed with them, instead keeping them at a distance. As he used to say, "Sometimes the Right hand doesn't know what the Far Right hand is doing." But in private, he and his senior advisers would tell the neocons, "We need you to hold our feet to the fire."
The elder neocons and, increasingly, their junior clique (many of whom were children of the founding generation) were happy to do so. This is because neocons like to play with fire, especially when it's other people getting burned. Throughout the 80s, they agitated incessantly for military action, covert and overt, against the Soviets in places like Nicaragua, El Salvador, Angola, Afghanistan. They were not always wrong.
When Ronald Reagan came to power, most Americans accepted the "mature Cold War" as a permanent fact of international life. This acceptance was based on the perceived realities of Soviet military power. But it was also based on the belief, carefully nurtured by the Soviets and the American academics and CIA types who studied them, that material life was getting continually better for the average Russian.
How nearly everybody got it exactly backwards is a fascinating story in itself. Suffice it to say: Ronald Reagan did not.
His strategy was cold, it was clear, it was thoughtful and purposeful, and it was very definitely his own. Reagan knew intuitively that the Soviet Union was tottering. But he did not want to fight the Soviets, he wanted to bring them to the negotiating table. To that end, he used little, if any, overt force against the Soviet Union. Instead, he developed what in Pentagonese was known as "competitive strategies." In plain English, this meant, "Spend 'em to death." Reagan's aim was to force the Soviet Union to spend money, allocate resources, and occupy technical talent that they either had better use for elsewhere or didn't have. (The best Soviet scientists and engineers were world-class, but they had no real depth, no bench strength.) Supporting the mujahedin in Afghanistan was one way to deplete them. The Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as Star Wars-perhaps the most successful weapons system never built or intended to be built-was another.
In short, Ronald Reagan walked the Soviets up to the edge of an economic abyss of their own making, then let them ponder what a revived competition with the United States would mean. Mikhail Gorbachev got the message. He wanted "Perestroika," or "restructuring." He got collapse.
And then we broke our word, which was not so much a set of firm promises as the word that had underlain our attitude toward Russia since 1917. Get rid of communism, call off the global offensive, we'll be friends. We'll even help.
But we didn't. Instead, we pushed them toward their present angry stance. And that is hard to forgive.
We said the right things, from time to time. But as we'd done with Vietnam and Afghanistan, we lost interest and walked away. We got attached to telegenic "celebrities" like Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, which was a huge mistake. When they left power, we lost our frame of reference and were unable to sense the positive qualities of other leaders, such as the late General Alexander Lebed. When Russia's early experiments in democracy segued into anarchy, we shrugged it off. We sent them humanitarian aid, not troubling ourselves too much when it mostly ended up on the black market.
We even sent them Ivy League economists to screw up what was left of their economy by advocating extraordinarily premature privatization. Whole industries were looted or otherwise acquired by well-placed apparatchiks, former communists who'd printed up new business cards, while inflation soared. Both economic and political problems in the former Soviet Union were compounded by the fact that for generations, private business was a crime and "profit" was itself a criminal concept. The result was that criminal penetration of legitimate business activities is pervasive and profound; while organized crime in Russia became a huge business-and we didn't particularly care. If anything, trying to get a handle on organized crime kept the Russians busy. And we were pleased when some of the former Soviet Socialist Republics declared independence (like Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan) or tried to do so (like Chechnya and Dagestan). We could hardly disguise our glee when the Russian Army almost came apart in the First Chechen War.
Democracy, as the neocons liked to gloat, was a' bustin' out all over.
If we'd given a damn, we would have tried to understand this regional fragmentation from their point of view-a point of view that predated communism by five hundred years. If we'd given a damn, we would have helped, seriously helped, the Russians get their economic house in order before making any but the most basic political reforms. We would have understood that a nation with no democratic heritage and no functioning middle class had to go through some messy times, and could not do so on our timetable. We would have understood that a Vladimir Putin had to emerge-because the alternative was worse.
For that matter, if we'd ever cared about our own real greatness, we might have helped the Russians get their own house in order. But America's policy elites totally wasted the 90s with narcissistic navel-gazing. America needed a Purpose, and helping the Russians just wasn't sexy enough. So they were assigned their role in America's New World Order-pathetic, impotent basket case and object lesson-and we left it at that. We had the rest of the planet to play with.
And so the politics of feeling good about yourself came to dominate post-Cold War foreign policy. The "America's Purpose" debate of the 1990s must rank as proof of both the inherent idiocy and the inevitable failure of defining the world as a place for us to administer or save. On one side were the liberal "Muscular Humanitarians," not averse to using force provided we did it "selflessly." On the other were the neocons, the "America's Greatness" crowd, casting about for a lifelong crisis worthy of what they deemed their literary and political talents. They-the younger generation of neocons, especially-had no problem with Madeleine Albright, Clinton's secretary of state, when she asked Colin Powell, "What's the point of having an army if you don't use it?" Indeed, they answered the question General Powell was too furious to address. The neocon response: Let's use force-to turn the Arab world into good little American knock-offs, for starters. And ever since 1991, we've been using our muscle on behalf of Muslims: in Kuwait, in Somalia, in Bosnia, in Kosovo, in Afghanistan, in Iraq.
In Iran?
But what of Russia?
While we were nattering about America's Purpose and getting into war after war, the Russians were slowly putting their internal house in order. But we saw only corruption and crime, suppression and incompetence...when we bothered to look at all. And when we weren't ignoring or dismissing them, we were humiliating them. When the Cold War ended, we congratulated ourselves on how we were too decent to gloat. But we didn't bother to consider the cumulating humiliations we then inflicted upon them both by our indifference and our policies toward others.
We ostentatiously built bases and signed agreements with nations of the former Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact. We got bases in Uzbekistan and Kirghizstan in order to access Afghanistan, which we actually occupy, and have emergency landing rights in Kazakhstan that go beyond international treaties requiring any airport to offer landing rights to any aircraft in distress. NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization established in 1949 to counter the Soviet Union, now found itself without a purpose. So, with American blessing and prodding, NATO began an aggressive Drang nach Osten, moving eastward toward a nonexistent threat in order to have something to do. Today, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, what used to be East Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia are all members of NATO, All except Slovenia, which was part of the former Yugoslavia, were either members of the Warsaw Pact or actually part of the Soviet Union.
And then there was Georgia, still a candidate for membership, along with Ukraine, another former Soviet republic. And today we're busily planning to establish anti-missile systems in these areas, ostensibly to protect Europe from Iranian attack.
We call this expanding democracy and strengthening the "international community." In some ways, it was. But we did it boorishly, rather like a man who flaunts his new mistress in front of her old lover. And we continue to do so today, along with all our threats and admonitions: the empty, ludicrous words of a braggart whose bluff has been called but can't seem to shut up.
The Russians didn't like this militarization of lands near and on their borders. They let us know they didn't like this. They let us know it for a long time, very loudly. That was always the thing about them during the Cold War. If something really bothered them, they let us know, clearly and in a timely manner. This hasn't changed, except-until Georgia-we believed we didn't have to pay attention.
Which brings us to Vladimir Putin, who turns out to be less the Man You Love to Hate than a Russian who intends for his country to be respected...and is prepared to respect us in return. More's the pity that we've given him so little opportunity to do so.
In December 2007, Time Magazine named Putin as "Person of the Year." The magazine described him as "diminutive" (if he is, I'm a supermodel) and "sardonic but humorless. In our hours together, he didn't attempt a joke, and he misread several of our attempts at playfulness." But Time's transcripts of the interview show a man who is unfailingly courteous, even when confronted with outright insolence. Asked if he believed in a Supreme God, Putin replied, "Do you? ... There are things I believe, which should not in my position, at least, be shared with the public at large for everybody's consumption because that would look like self-advertising or a political striptease."
Asked how he viewed the relationship with the United States, Putin replied, "Indeed, Russia and the U.S. were allies during the two tragic conflicts of the Second and the First World Wars, which allows us to think there's something objectively bringing us together in difficult times, and I think-I believe-it has to do with geopolitical interests and also has a moral component. ... The ability to compromise is not a diplomatic politeness toward a partner but rather taking into account and respecting your partner's legitimate interests."
Asked for an example, Putin offered the North Korean nuclear issue: "We were thinking about each other's interests and at the same time about the interests of the country in question, the problems, the issues we were trying to address. Based on such an approach, in the end we resolved the issue to a large extent. At the same time, where we fail to be guided by those basic principles, where we push forward some economic or political self-interest, we fail to arrive at solutions that would realistically address the issue. ... Where we try to take into account each other's interest, we achieve lasting results." A back-and-forth exchange between Putin and Time is as follows:
TIME: Do you think the U.S. wants to see a strong Russia, or a weak Russia? PUTIN: I believe the U.S. already understands and will understand more and more that only a strong Russia will respond to the genuine interests of the United States.
TIME: What is NATO's purpose today? If Russia were invited to join would it do so?
PUTIN: I wouldn't call NATO a putrid corpse of the cold war, but it is a leftover of the past, indeed.... Russia has no intention of joining military-political blocs because that would be tantamount to restricting its sovereignty. But we want to have good relations, both with the U.S. and with other countries, including NATO countries.
Later, after answering a question about chess great and dissident Gary Kasparov's unsuccessful bid for the Presidency, Putin addressed a very large issue: "The bloc system of relations must be replaced by an altogether different system based on common rules that are called international law, and those rules should be strictly abided by. At the end of the day, only this may ensure stability and respect for the interest of small nations and not just large ones and superpowers like the United States."
In a 10,600 word transcript, Putin uses the words interest or interests 23 times. These are not obscurantist subtleties that require a Ph. D. Kremlinologist to interpret. This is a man who has brought his country back from the brink of anarchy, saying in words so plain and simple even a child can understand them, that Russia is a friend and equal of the United States and as such, we must respect their interests-as they respect ours. He was too polite to state the obvious, that it is in the best interests of the United States to respect Russia's interests and that those interests will not be disrespected without consequence. An adult, he did his interviewers the courtesy of assuming they were also adults.
Time Magazine notwithstanding, the US has responded in two ways. First, Putin is increasingly demonized, especially in the Murdoch media apparat. The neocons continue their well-co-ordinated muttering about a new Cold War, and seem quite happy to do so. And why not? For eight years, the Bush administration's acting-out of their fantasies and obsessions have so weakened America, financially and militarily, that only a new threat can justify further expenditures and exertions.
To repeat:
Not so long ago, the neocons wanted Russia to be a basket case, on the verge of famine, corrupt and impotent, so we could have our way in what used to be their empire-and remains their border area. Now, suddenly, the neocons find their resurgence so deliciously alarming that it's already being used as justification for that ultimate indicator of Purpose, increased defense spending.
It's all so obvious, so contrived, so made-to-order, that you feel embarrassed for them.
Russia is never going to be an exemplar of democracy and human rights, no more than Iraq or Afghanistan. But that does not mean that Russia cannot be a decent and humane country. The neocons and the administration do not desire that for Russia, and that is the gravamen of all the verbiage about keeping Russia out of the "international community."
It helped the demonization process that Putin was former KGB. But even if he'd been a former dissident or priest, it wouldn't have mattered. We prefer our Russian leaders evil or, failing that, incompetent. Putin is neither. He is, to borrow a favorite neocon phrase, "tough-minded." And tough-minded people understand that patience is not a limitless virtue.
We brought him to the end of his patience. For a decade, we had been oblivious to Russian humiliation by our ham-handed pursuit of our interests in their own back yard. Then we began to deliberately bait them in a way we would never have dared to do to the old Soviet Union. The final straws were our recognition of Kosovo, part of the former Yugoslavia, as an independent and sovereign state back in February, over both Serbian and Russian protests, the attempt to extend a US anti-ballistic missile shield into the Czech Republic, Poland and Ukraine, and an offer of membership in NATO to the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, a US-supported drama queen of a democracy that was engaged in some very unwise provocations of its own.
In terms of the morality of power politics-a harsh morality that tolerates neither fantasy nor stupidity forever-there are three things wrong with baiting the Russians like this.
First, we didn't just humiliate the Russians; we angered them over their vital interests when there was no reason to. Anger can be very motivating. For over a decade, we humiliated them when they were really in no position to respond. It's when you can't respond that, when you have to just take it, that you are humiliated. When you can engage in the hard, purposeful pleasure of taking action, the humiliation is over. Time's transcript of the Putin interview was read by people who matter in DC-as Putin, a former professional intelligence officer, meant it to be. Putin was saying, clearly and publicly, the time for this nonsense was over; it was time for America to come to an adult understanding of its real interests and act accordingly.
We ignored that message by threatening Russia's very real interests. They didn't like it-they really didn't like it-when former Warsaw Pact nations join NATO, even if it is not quite a putrid corpse. And no one is stupid enough to think that an Iranian missile attack is going to come through Poland or Ukraine. Not even the neocons, and that was a gratuitous insult to Russian intelligence. But offering NATO membership to parts of the former Soviet Union, like Georgia, threatens Russia's right to control its own borders and no nation can tolerate that. Nor should any nation tolerate the hostile and threatening militarization of its neighbors. China didn't in 1950 when US troops approached the Yalu River in Korea. We didn't in 1962 when Khrushchev put missiles in Cuba.
In the end, nations who tolerate threats on their borders pay for it. Israel knows about this. So does the United States with-dare we be honest?-Mexico.
In sum, we have violated a basic tenet of the morality of power politics. Do not threaten the vital interests of others when you yourself have nothing vital to gain. Neither we nor the rest of NATO-including former Warsaw Pact countries like Poland and former Soviet Republics like the Baltics-has anything to gain by admitting Georgia (or Ukraine) to NATO over Russian objections. Rather the opposite. In fact, we've gone out of our way to ignore their positive actions and our commonalities of interest elsewhere. Russia supplies oil and natural gas to Europe and has been quietly very helpful and cooperative to both America and Europe when dealing with terrorism, Islamic and otherwise. Russia could be of enormous help in dealing with the Iranians, if we gave them any reason to be (the Iranians know better than to bait the Russians; doing so to us is safe). Russia also has a dwindling ethnic Russian population and a 2,600 mile border with China, which has a growing population, including a huge surplus of military-age males; in fact, the natural eastern border between Russia and China is the Ussuri River. Nevertheless, Russia holds lands east of the Ussuri, including the major port of Vladivostok, denying China access to the Sea of Japan. Prudent people wonder how long those lands can remain Russian, and the Russians, who are nothing if not prudent, remember the 1969 Ussuri River fighting. Currently, China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan and Russia have all signed a treaty limiting troops along their borders, but all those nations know that treaties only last as long as they are in the interests of the signatories.
America might also consider that the United States is for the foreseeable future imprudently dependent on oil, and begin cutting deals with Russia as we wean ourselves, first off Middle Eastern oil, then off of oil itself. America and Europe more generally have an enormous amount to gain from cooperating with Russia, and Russia knows very well it has an enormous amount to gain from cooperating with us. In return for infuriating and alienating the Russians the Georgians offer us-what? Two thousand troops whom we have to equip, transport, and train, to maintain the pretense that our Iraq war is really a "coalition" operation.
And then, unforgivably, our encouragement of Mr. Saakashvili's delusions of democracy and NATO membership got ordinary Georgians killed for nothing.
There has never been the slightest chance we would sacrifice Peoria, or anything else, for Georgia. Even if we had the money and conventional military forces available, any American President who would militarily challenge the Russians for part of their own nation would be justifiably considered certifiable. All we did, all we could have done, by offering NATO membership to Georgia, was get Georgians killed-conscripts, women, children, old men. For nothing. Not even in unilateral American interests. All we can do to the Poles by permitting them, as we have, to sign our missile defense treaty, is endanger them-for nothing, not even our own selfish interests. We have no intention of defending them, and this travesty of a treaty can only further convince the Russians (and anyone else who happens to be watching) of our President's lack of basic common sense and decency. At this point, Russian policy makers are probably less angry than deeply concerned about the collective sanity of the Bush Administration.
Of course, the United States is going to be around long after the neocons-who, not content with having wrecked our military and looted our treasury, are apparently trying to alienate our most powerful potential ally-are gone. We're going to have to fix the mess.
So how should we deal with the Russians?
For a start, look at a map. Russia's real enemies are to the south and east, and none of those folks, Chinese or Islamist, wish us well, either. Second, take a page from the Russians. Our foreign and defense policies have to take a back seat to fundamental economic restructuring because it is our wealth that enables us to implement our policies. Then let's start acting like adults: adults make foreign policy based upon a realistic assessment of their interests and capabilities, and the interests and capabilities of those around them. They don't pick fights they can't win and have nothing to gain from, with people who don't want to fight them.
The real world is a nasty place and America needs friends and allies. Why are we making an unnecessary enemy of a power that by all rights, as well as by logic and morality, ought to be our friend?
Quite a few people I have discussed Georgia with, seem to be under the impression that it is one pristine, clean nation. Seeing no evil and speaking no evil. Their understanding of that breakaway nation state is quite rudimentary, to say the very least, and it becomes useful to shed some light on the activities of this nation state beholden to the US.
Examining the role Georgia plays on its border with Russia raises some worrying issues and tend to reinforce reasons for Russia’s discomfort with Saakashvili’s government. Georgia is a known transit route for drugs, arms, human cargo and counterfeiting. This role is enabled by its strategic location and porous borders. South Ossetia for example has matured into a base for organized crime in the trafficking of all sorts of contraband including arms, drugs and uranium. Saakashvili has looked the other way, refusing to post border patrols etc, as its degradation occured and has left the Russians to their own devices in steming this malignant growth. The New York Times in its opinion of 15 August 2008 stated:
“While the Russian “peacekeepers” who entrenched themselves in the conflict zones in the 1990s (and who will now likely resume their posts anew) have proved ineffectual and uninterested in maintaining stability, they’ve been highly successful in protecting an array of sophisticated criminal networks stretching from Russia through Georgian territory. South Ossetia, in particular, is a nest of organized crime. It is a marketplace for a variety of contraband, from fuel to cigarettes, wheat flour, hard drugs, weapons, people and, recently, counterfeit United States $100 bills “minted” at a press inside the conflict zone.”
It goes on to tell us that about $20 million of this said counterfeit bills have been found floating “... up and down the East Coast of the United States as well as in Israel, Russia and Georgia.” Further more, we learn from the American Ambassador to Georgia, what the quality of this reproduction looks like “It’s a pretty sophisticated counterfeiting piece,” said John Tefft to Michael Bronner, an investigative journalist and film maker.
We also learn from the New York Times that:
“Three years ago, Georgian intelligence officials began receiving reports from South Ossetian criminal contacts that a Russian smuggler — a North Ossetian calling himself Oleg — was circulating in Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital. He was reportedly looking for a buyer for what he claimed was high-quality enriched uranium pilfered from the Russian military. The price was $1 million for the initial shipment: 100 grams at $10,000 per gram.”
Russia denies that the said uranium originates from its military and the Bush administration has been quick to grab hold of it. Amnesty International reports that:
“On February 19, 2003 a general cargo ship - the "Karin Cat" - foundered in rough conditions in the Mediterranean Sea midway between Malta and the Island of Crete... inquiry by the Danish Maritime Authority(65) that followed revealed that, in addition to 205 tons of equipment and pipes for a natural gas company, the cargo was made up of 158 tons of ammunition, a sophisticated man-portable short-range missile system, and a radar truck... However, the ship’s voyages and history cast doubt on the real destination of part of its military cargo and its owner’s activities... The Karin Cat was not the only ship of J. Poulsen involved in the transport of military equipment: the "Sarah Poulsen," had also been used along with other Danish ships for the transport of various arms cargoes to South Africa during the apartheid regime, in violation of the UN arms embargo. The routes followed in 2002 by the Karin Cat before reaching Antwerp were complex, calling at many ports with military-related activities, such as La Spezia (Italy), Gdynia (Poland), Poti (Georgia), Bar (Serbia) and Lymassol (Cyprus)... The secretive and irregular way these arms were collected in various ports casts many doubts about... the real destination of the military cargo.”
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that at least 500 Georgian women fall victim to trafficking every year. According to data from known cases, the majority of trafficking cases concerning Georgian women involve Turkey. One local non-governmental organization that took part in creating a government anti-trafficking action plan, People’s Harmonious Development, contends that 75 percent of the 800-1,200 people who cross into Turkey each day from Georgia eventually extend their stay with month-long visas. Of that number, the NGO believes that half – 300 to 450 – are trafficking victims. A lack of statistics means, however, that the figures are largely a guessing game. Marc Hulst, the counter-trafficking program officer at the IOM mission in Tbilisi, states that there is no way of knowing exactly how many victims exist. "We believe the cases that come to the attention of police are the tip of the iceberg," Hulst said. Given Georgia’s high unemployment rate and rampant poverty, experts fear that those numbers can only increase. The majority of trafficking victims are young (most are between 18 and 35, though some as young as 14 have been trafficked to Turkey as sex workers), female and come from poor families. But with only an estimated 20 percent of the Georgian working age population receiving wages - and average monthly wages hovering around $70 according to the latest data – even highly educated Georgians are at risk from the dangers of trafficking as they take their job searches abroad.
A report on states and their government activities viz-a-viz nacortics trade comments on Georgia thus:
“Georgia remains a secondary transit route for narcotics flowing from Afghanistan, by way of Iran and across the Caspian. The potential for Georgia to become an important narcotics transit route in the future is heightened by the lack of control the government exercises over its borders and territory. Despite numerous efforts of reform and frequent personnel changes, law enforcement agencies remained overstaffed, under-equipped, poorly paid, and with a reputation as highly corrupt.”
It further adds that:
“Afghan morphine and heroin base destined for Turkey is also presumed to transit Georgia. Given Georgia's geographic location and its ambition to be a key link in a future overland trade corridor between Europe and Asia there is a possibility it could also emerge as a major drug trafficking route. Narcotics trafficking routes through Georgia which have been identified are as follows: The east/west route with narcotics entering the country from Azerbaijan via the Caspian Sea (originating in Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan) to Baku, then they are shipped north via Russian land routes and then enter Georgia. The main method of transit is TIR trucks that are not monitored in Azerbaijan or in Georgia, but rather theoretically inspected and sealed at their place of origin. TIR trucks move westward to Kyurdamir, then to Yevlakh and cross the border at Gardabani destined for Tbilisi. From Tbilisi the drugs are shipped west to the seaports of Poti, Batumi (Adjara) and Sukhumi (Abkhazia) on the Black Sea. From there the drugs are shipped mainly to Turkey (Istanbul), Romania (Constantia) and Ukraine (Odessa)...”
And concludes:
“Corruption has been the most significant problem within Georgia's law enforcement agencies. Georgia's anti- corruption efforts continue to be hampered by the widespread tolerance of corruption within Georgian society.”
All one needs to add, is that America and its wrenching of Georgia from Russia has not helped matters but aggravates them. Having no specific interest in that country but the protection of some pipeline that empties into the seaport at Poti, it couldn’t careless in which direction the wind blows Georgia’s domestic concerns. With Saakashvili being hopeful for the history books and suicidal about winning some dream war with Russia, he's unlikely to pay any attention to the trafficking that enriches his citizens to cripple the West and Russia.
POTI, Georgia (AP) — Russian forces blocked the only land entrance to Georgia's main oil port city on Thursday, a day before Russia promised to complete a troop pullout from its ex-Soviet neighbor.
Armored personnel carriers and troop trucks blocked the bridge to the Black Sea port city of Poti, and Russian forces excavated trenches and set up mortars facing the city. Another group of APCs and trucks were positioned in a nearby wooded area.
Although Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has promised that his forces would pull back by Friday, Russian troops appear to be digging in, raising concern about whether Moscow is aiming for a lengthy occupation of its small, pro-Western neighbor.
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili told The Associated Press that Russia was thinning out its presence in some occupied towns but was seizing other strategic spots. He called the Russian moves "some kind of deception game."
"(The Russians) are making fun of the world," he declared.
An EU-sponsored cease-fire says both Russian and Georgian forces must move back to positions they held before fighting broke out Aug. 7 in Georgia's separatist republic of South Ossetia, which has close ties to Russia. The agreement also says Russian forces can work in a so-called "security zone" that extends more than four miles into Georgia from South Ossetia.
Poti is at least 95 miles west of the nearest point in South Ossetia. It's also Georgia's key oil port.
Russian tanks, trucks and troops, meanwhile, continued to hold positions around the strategically key city of Gori and in Igoeti, about 30 miles west of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi.
The warfare in a nation straining to escape Moscow's influence has sent tensions between Moscow and the West to some of their highest levels since the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union.
On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her Polish counterpart signed a deal to build an American missile defense base in Poland. Last week, a top Russian general warned Poland was risking an attack, possibly a nuclear one, by developing the base.
A spokeswoman for Norway's defense ministry said Russia had told its embassy that Moscow plans to "freeze all military cooperation" with NATO and its allies. Later, Russia's Interfax news agency cited Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko as saying Moscow was reconsidering its cooperation with the military alliance.
South Ossetia is recognized internationally as part of Georgia, but Russia says the future of the province is up to provincial leaders. President Bush and other Western leaders have stressed that Georgia must retain its current borders.
In a sign Russia plans to solidify its control of South Ossetia, Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn said Russia would build 18 checkpoints in the security cordon around the province, with 270 soldiers manning front-line posts.
The parliament of another pro-Russia separatist region, Abkhazia, urged Russia on Wednesday to recognize its independence. Fighting flared in both regions before Georgia and Russia agreed to a cease-fire.
In Gori, no Russian troops or heavy weaponry could be seen Wednesday evening, including on the bridges and main access points. Earlier in the day, Russian troops had been strictly limiting access to Gori to residents and turning away foreign journalists.
Shota Abramidze, a 73-year-old retired engineer, said Gori residents wanted the Russians out.
"They've stolen everything. They've bombed everything. This is fascism, that's what this is."
Along the main highway from Gori to Tbilisi, Russian peacekeepers stopped cars and checked documents of passengers. In Gori itself, Russian troops limited access to residents and turned away foreign journalists. In a back alley, dozens of people waited for promised food.
At a military training school in the mountain town of Sachkhere, a Georgian sentry said Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers had shown up the day before and demanded to be let in, leaving only after a 30-minute standoff. He said the Russians vowed to blow up facilities in the village of Osiauri.
On Wednesday, Georgia said Russian soldiers destroyed military logistics facilities in Osiauri, but the claim could not immediately be confirmed.
About 80,000 people displaced by the fighting are in more than 600 centers in and around Tbilisi. The United Nations estimates 158,000 people in all fled their homes in the last two weeks — some south to regions around Tbilisi, some north to Russia.
George Monbiot takes up a theme we dealt with here the other day: the centrality of the Pentagon war machine -- and its attendant corporate war profiteers -- in American policy and politics today.
Monbiot's specific subject is the U.S. "missile defense system" -- the greatest boondoggle in human history, and an endless fount of corruption for decades. But he also provides an excellent general description of America's degraded, dysfunctional state, which is never on more naked display than during the quadrennial freak show of a presidential campaign:
If we seek to understand American foreign policy in terms of a rational engagement with international problems, or even as an effective means of projecting power, we are looking in the wrong place. The government's interests have always been provincial. It seeks to appease lobbyists, shift public opinion at crucial stages of the political cycle, accommodate crazy Christian fantasies and pander to television companies run by eccentric billionaires. The US does not really have a foreign policy. It has a series of domestic policies which it projects beyond its borders. That they threaten the world with 57 varieties of destruction is of no concern to the current administration. The only question of interest is who gets paid and what the political kickbacks will be.
I'm afraid this will be the chief question of interest to the next administration as well. As for "missile defense" -- which is now playing a starring role in the new Cold War being avidly fomented by America's bipartisan political elite - Monbiot is worth quoting at length:
The system has been in development since 1946, and so far it has achieved a grand total of nothing....All the trials run so far - successful or otherwise - have been rigged. The target, its type, trajectory and destination, are known before the test begins. Only one enemy missile is used, as the system doesn't have a hope in hell of knocking down two or more. If decoy missiles are deployed, they bear no resemblance to the target and they are identified as decoys in advance. In order to try to enhance the appearance of success, recent flight tests have become even less realistic: the agency has now stopped using decoys altogether when testing its GMD system.
This points to one of the intractable weaknesses of missile defence: it is hard to see how the interceptors could ever outwit enemy attempts to confuse them. As Philip Coyle - formerly a senior official at the Pentagon with responsibility for missile defence - points out, there are endless means by which another state could fool the system. For every real missile it launched, it could dispatch a host of dummies with the same radar and infra-red signatures. Even balloons or bits of metal foil would render anything resembling the current system inoperable. You can reduce a missile's susceptibility to laser penetration by 90% by painting it white. This sophisticated avoidance technology, available from your local hardware shop, makes another multibillion component of the programme obsolete. Or you could simply forget about ballistic missiles and attack using cruise missiles, against which the system is useless.
Monbiot then gets to the corroded heart of the matter: scratch, geetus, moolah, long green. As he notes, the Pentagon and its willing enablers on both sides of the political aisle have come up with a truly artistic budgetary innovation to keep golden goose a-laying: "spiral development." From Monbiot:
The US has spent between $120bn and $150bn on the programme since Ronald Reagan relaunched it in 1983. Under George Bush, the costs have accelerated. The Pentagon has requested $62bn for the next five-year tranche, which means that the total cost between 2003 and 2013 will be $110bn. Yet there are no clear criteria for success. As a recent paper in the journal Defense and Security Analysis shows, the Pentagon invented a new funding system in order to allow the missile defence programme to evade the government's usual accounting standards. It's called spiral development, which is quite appropriate, because it ensures that the costs spiral out of control.
Spiral development means, in the words of a Pentagon directive, that "the end-state requirements are not known at programme initiation". Instead, the system is allowed to develop in whatever way officials think fit. The result is that no one has the faintest idea what the programme is supposed to achieve, or whether it has achieved it. There are no fixed dates, no fixed costs for any component of the programme, no penalties for slippage or failure, no standards of any kind against which the system can be judged. And this monstrous scheme is still incapable of achieving what a few hundred dollars' worth of diplomacy could do in an afternoon.
So why commit endless billions to a programme that is bound to fail? I'll give you a clue: the answer is in the question. It persists because it doesn't work.
US politics, because of the failure by both Republicans and Democrats to deal with the problems of campaign finance, is rotten from head to toe. But under Bush, the corruption has acquired Nigerian qualities. Federal government is a vast corporate welfare programme, rewarding the industries that give millions of dollars in political donations with contracts worth billions. Missile defence is the biggest pork barrel of all, the magic pudding that won't run out, however much you eat. The funds channelled to defence, aerospace and other manufacturing and service companies will never run dry because the system will never work.
Monbiot also points out the obvious: the nation must be kept in a constant welter of fear and indignation in order to keep the pork flowing:
To keep the pudding flowing, the administration must exaggerate the threats from nations that have no means of nuking it - and ignore the likely responses of those that do. Russia is not without its own corrupting influences. You could see the grim delight of the Russian generals and defence officials last week, who have found in this new deployment an excuse to enhance thei
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