Rather than Direct or Indirect Negotiations

By Adel Samara

For the first time a minor dispute has occurred between the members of the Palestinian normalization wing, i.e. the right and left of wings of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), westernized intellectuals, the renegade Marxists and the so called independent “figures”; in other word “Oslo-Stan Wing”[1]. There is no major difference or gap between the Palestinian Authority (PA) which goes to the negotiations designed by the US imperialism and accepted by the Zionist Ashkenazi Regime (ZAR), and its semi-allies who accept the Oslo Accords as the incubator of all Palestinian compromise. Recognizing the ZAR’s right to control most of Historic Palestine, and indirectly giving up the Palestinian Refugees Right of Return (RoR) are put on top of the list of compromise.

The minor dispute occurred between the PA and its Palestinian Factions Peace Process supporters who contradicted the PA on this occasion only when they called for Indirect Negotiations. The latter planned to hold a conference in Ramallah to express their opposition for the Direct Negotiations, but the former prevented them from holding that conference by sending a huge number of police to the conference hall. This act aborted the conference.

A lot of articles followed that incident which aimed at reminding the two competitors, Chairman of the PA and the PLO Mahmud Abbas, and Prime Minister, who rules without a “parliament”, Salam Fayyad, that they made an intrusion against the “Palestinian Democracy”!

Both Palestinian leaders are encouraged by the USA to proceed in its agenda until one of them manages to eliminate the other. Abbas controls part of Fattah movement, while Fayyad builds his police through the demand and assistance of the US general, Lieutenant General Keith W. Dayton, who is based in Ramallah. This division and development dismantled the largest PLO organization, Fattah movement.

Aborting the conference shocked the “allies” of the PA, who planned for that event, because they discovered that they are not necessary for either PA leader. They had no choice except accepting the direct negotiations or to go to hell. This proved to them that they were not true partners. They were no more than dependents on Fattah and on a later stage the PA. This dependence was shaped in the form of receiving a few high rank corrupt jobs, mainly for the leaders, or jobs for their cadres in the civil and security police…etc.

Those miserable allies are now announcing that the PA has made an intrusion against “Palestinian democracy”. The question that is raised here is: what kind of democracy that is authorized by a settler colonial regime that is still occupying all of Historic Palestine and sponsored by the ex-US president Jimmy Carter who represents the imperialist centre.

It must be noted that, while Oslo Accords lure the largest Palestinian organization to give up military struggle, the so called “democracy” lures the new largest Palestinian organization Hamas to fall into the trap of democracy under the settler colonial regime.

The outcome of the Palestinian politics of the left and the right of PLO is corruption, normalization, and ending resistance.

The price that is paid for this outcome is mainly wealth, i.e. these Palestinians compromise the basic and historical rights of Palestinians and got a rent for that. The PA is supported by the imperialist donors, let some Trickle-down to its allies, and the left wing of the PLO is supported by Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) to the extent that it is NGOized There has been a kind of division of labour between the imperialist donors e.g. the US controls and creates a new secret local army to terminate any resistance, the EU controls the training course and pays most of the public service salaries, Japan controls and pays for the environment, France, Turkey and others building “maquladoros” on the borders of 1967 to wipe the border and make “economic” peace of Netanyahu the only fact on the ground. The new “cultural” imperialists Norway, Sweden and Denmark are infiltrating the academia and the minds.

The question is “To what extent are those ‘allies” ready and believe in finding a real opposition other than verbal condemnations”? Two decades ago they used the fax machine to spread their verbal opposition, but now they are using the IT technology to do so! To what extent are their elite able to practice austerity and stop depending on the poisoned money of the donors, NGOs and the new little imperialists (Norway, Sweden and Denmark)? They are unable and lack the will to do so.

That is why Abbas will embark into his negotiations; Fayyad is embarking in his termination of any political and military resistance, but smoothly. The allies know that!

Finally, the regime (the PA, PLO and Dayton) are calm, the allies will go down the tree slowly, their VIPs, privileges NGOs and salaries will pull them down. Only the popular classes know the truth, which is “the forces of PLO, i.e. politicians, intellectuals and most of the cadres did Internalizes the Defeat. The renegade ex-Marxist intellectuals theorize for all forms of defeat especially for normalization.

There is no struggle in Palestine against the ZAR, the routes for a real struggle are blocked by the PA’s forces. In the Occupied West Bank struggling is mere imagination. How to restore it to be real? This needs different forces.

Fidel Castro

Primera parte

En la reciente Reflexión de hace dos días, el 15 de agosto, escribí al comentar un artículo del periodista cubano Randy Alonso, que dirige el programa “Mesa Redonda” de la televisión nacional, acerca de una reunión sostenida en el hotel Dolce de Barcelona sobre lo que él llama Gobierno Mundial. “¼ articulistas honestos estaban siguiendo igual que él las noticias que lograron filtrarse del extraño encuentro. Alguien mucho más informado que ellos estaba siguiendo la pista de esos eventos desde hacía muchos años.”

Me refería al escritor Daniel Estulin; 475 páginas de 20 líneas me esperaban para una revisión de la fantástica historia narrada por el mencionado autor, si alguno de los participantes en esa reunión fuese capaz de negar su presencia allí, o su participación en lo que relata su libro.

Lo más que cabe en esta Reflexión, que dividiré en dos partes para que no resulte demasiado extensa, es incluir un número de párrafos que seleccioné para dar una idea del fabuloso libro titulado: “Los secretos del Club Bilderberg”. En ese libro Estulin hace trizas a los grandes gurúes:

Henry Kissinger, George Osborne, los directivos de Goldman Sachs, Robert Zoellic, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Pascal Lamy, Jean Claude Trichet, Ana Patricia Botín, los presidentes de la Coca Cola, France Telecom, Telefónica de España, Suez, Siemens, Shell, British Petroleum, y otros similares políticos y magnates de las finanzas.

Estulin comienza por las raíces:

“‘Durante dos domingos seguidos, algo sin precedentes, en el programa de Ed Sullivan -nos cuenta Donald Phau en The Satanic Roots of Rock-, más de setenta y cinco millones de norteamericanos vieron cómo los Beatles agitaban la cabeza y movían el esqueleto en un ritual que pronto iba a ser copiado por cientos de futuros grupos de rock’.”

“El hombre encargado de que a los estadounidenses les ‘gustaran’ los Beatles fue el mismo Walter Lippmann. Los Beatles, el grupo más parodiado y versionado de la historia de la música, fueron puestos ante el público norteamericano para que fueran descubiertos.”

“Entra Theo Adorno”, se titula uno de los epígrafes iniciales.

“La responsabilidad de elaborar una teoría social del rock and roll recayó en el sociólogo, musicólogo y compositor alemán Theodor Adorno, ‘uno de los principales filósofos de la Escuela de Frankfurt de Investigación Social¼ ‘ Adorno fue enviado a Estados Unidos en 1939 para dirigir el Proyecto de Investigación de la Radio de Princetown, un esfuerzo conjunto del Tavistock y de la Escuela de Frankfurt con el objetivo de controlar a las masas, financiado por la Fundación Rockefeller y fundado por uno de los hombres de confianza de David Rockefeller, Hadley Cantril¼ ”

“De hecho, los nazis habían utilizado intensivamente la propaganda radiofónica como instrumento de lavado de cerebro y la habían convertido en un elemento integral del Estado fascista. Este hecho fue observado y estudiado por las redes del Tavistock y utilizado extensivamente en sus propios experimentos. El objetivo de este proyecto, como se explica en la Introducción a la sociología de la música del propio Adorno, era «programar una cultura ‘musical’ de masas como una forma de control social masivo¼ »”

“‘Las cadenas de radio se convirtieron en unas máquinas que reciclaban durante veinticuatro horas al día los cuarenta mayores éxitos’.”

“Los Beatles llegaron a Estados Unidos en febrero de 1964, cuando el movimiento a favor de los derechos civiles estaba en su apogeo. El país se encontraba sumido en un profundo trauma nacional y se reponía del brutal asesinato del presidente John F. Kennedy [¼ ] en las calles de la capital el movimiento por los derechos civiles, dirigido por el doctor Martin Luther King, convocaba a una manifestación a la que asistieron más de medio millón de personas.”

“Entre 1964 y 1966, la llamada invasión británica fue la eclosión de una serie de cantantes y grupos de rock de Gran Bretaña que se hicieron populares en Estados Unidos y pusieron cerco a la cultura norteamericana. [¼ ] hacia finales de 1964 se demostró que esta ‘invasión inglesa’ había sido bien planificada y coordinada.

“‘Estos grupos recién creados y su estilo de vida [¼ ] se convirtieron en un nuevo ‘tipo’ (jerga del Tavistock) muy visible’, y no pasó mucho tiempo antes de que nuevos estilos (modas en ropa, peinado y uso del lenguaje) arrastraran a millones de jóvenes norteamericanos al nuevo culto. La juventud de Estados Unidos sufrió una revolución radical sin siquiera ser consciente de ello [¼ ] reaccionando de forma equivocada contra las manifestaciones de esa crisis, que eran las drogas de todo tipo, primero marihuana y luego ácido lisérgico (LSD), una poderosa droga que alteraba el estado de conciencia.’ [¼ ] en el cuartel general del MI6 en Londres y en la base de la CIA en Langley, Virginia, puede darse por sentado que la Inteligencia británica y su filial, la Oficina de Servicios Estratégicos norteamericana, estuvieron directamente implicadas en una investigación secreta para controlar la conducta humana. Allen Dulles, el director de la CIA en el momento en que la agencia empezó, MK-Ultra, era el jefe de la OSS en Berna, Suiza, durante la primera época de la investigación de Sandoz.”

“¼ en Estados Unidos y Europa, se utilizaron los grandes conciertos de rock al aire libre para frenar el creciente descontento de la población.”

“La ofensiva emprendida por Bilderberg-Tavistock llevó a toda una generación al camino de ladrillos amarillos del LSD y la marihuana¼ ”

“Entra Aldous Huxley”

“El sumo sacerdote de la guerra del opio inglesa fue Aldous Huxley, el nieto de Thomas H. Huxley, fundador del grupo de la Mesa Redonda de Rodas y, también, famoso y elocuente biólogo que ayudó a Charles Darwin a desarrollar la teoría de la evolución.”

“Toynbee, educado en Oxford [¼ ] trabajó como delegado británico en la Conferencia de Paz de París en 1919¼ ”

“‘Su tutor en Oxford fue H. G. Wells, director de la Inteligencia británica durante la Primera Guerra Mundial y padre espiritual de la Conspiración de Acuario. Aldous Huxley fue uno de los iniciados de los Hijos del Sol, un culto dionisiaco en que participaban los hijos de la élite de la Mesa Redonda británica.’ Su novela más famosa, Un mundo feliz, es un borrador (encargado por varios consejos mundiales) para un auténtico mundo socialista futuro bajo un gobierno único o, como su mentor fabiano, H. G. Wells, dijo y usó como título de una de sus populares novelas, un borrador para El Nuevo Orden Mundial¼ ”

“En Un mundo feliz, Huxley se centró en el método científico para mantener a todas las poblaciones fuera de la élite minoritaria en un estado casi permanente de sumisión y enamoradas de sus cadenas. Las herramientas principales para lograrlo fueron unas vacunas que alteraban las funciones del cerebro y medicamentos que el Estado obligaba a la población a consumir. En opinión de Wells, esto no era una conspiración, sino más bien ‘un cerebro mundial trabajando como policía de la mente’.”

“En 1937, Huxley se trasladó a California, donde trabajó como guionista para MGM, Warner Brothers y Walt Disney gracias a uno de sus contactos en Los Ángeles: Jacob Zeitlin.” [¼ ] ‘Bugsy Siegel, el jefe de la organización Lansky de la mafia para la Costa Oeste, tenía estrechos vínculos con Warner Brothers y MGM’.”

“De hecho, la industria del espectáculo -producción, distribución, marketing y publicidad- está bajo el control de una mafia que surge de la unión del crimen organizado y estafadores de alto nivel de Wall Street, que en última instancia están controlados por el todopoderoso Bilderberg. La industria del espectáculo está diseñada igual que cualquier otra ‘línea de negocio’ del Bilderberg y sus secuaces.”

“El trabajo de Huxley”

“En 1954, Huxley publicó un influyente estudio de la expansión de la conciencia mediante el uso de mescalina titulado Las puertas de la percepción (1954), el primer manifiesto de la cultura de las drogas psicodélicas.”

“En 1958 reunió una serie de ensayos que había escrito para Newsday y los publicó bajo el título de Nueva visita a un mundo feliz, en los que describía una sociedad en la que ‘el primer objetivo de los gobernantes es evitar a toda costa que sus gobernados creen problemas’.”

“Predijo que las democracias cambiarían su esencia: las viejas y extrañas tradiciones -elecciones, parlamentos, tribunales supremos- permanecerán, pero el substrato que habrá debajo será el del totalitarismo no violento. [¼ ] Mientras tanto, la oligarquía dirigente y su bien entrenada élite de soldados, policías, fabricantes de pensamiento y manipuladores de mentes dirigirán tranquilamente el mundo como les plazca. En efecto, esta descripción de Huxley se ajusta perfectamente a la situación actual.”

“En septiembre de 1960 se nombró a Huxley profesor invitado del Centennial Carnegie en el Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) de Boston. Estuvo allí sólo un semestre, tras el cual fue despedido. ‘Mientras estaba en esa ciudad, Huxley creó un círculo en Harvard¼ ‘.”

“El tema público de ese círculo o seminario de Harvard fue la religión y su significado en el mundo moderno. [¼ ] Michael Minnicino, en un artículo publicado en la revista The Campaigner en abril de 1974 [¼ ] afirma: ‘Huxley estableció contacto durante su período en Harvard con el presidente de Sandoz, que a su vez trabajaba en un encargo de la CIA para producir grandes cantidades de LSD y psilocibina (otra droga sintética alucinógena) para MK-Ultra, el experimento oficial de la CIA en la guerra química’, un experimento que usó a humanos como conejillos de Indias para sus a menudo letales experimentos que, en muchas ocasiones, implicaba el uso de LSD. [¼ ] Además, la Universidad McGill, en Montreal, Canadá, una institución de educación superior vinculada al Bilderberg, realizó también experimentos en la década de 1960 dentro del programa MK-Ultra bajo los auspicios de un fascista degenerado del Tavistock, John Rees, utilizando como sujetos a niños de orfanatos locales, a los que torturaban y luego suministraban diversas dosis de LSD. [¼ ] Según documentos recientemente desclasificados por la CIA (gracias a la Ley de Libertad de Información), Allen Dulles (en aquellos tiempos director de la CIA) compró más de cien millones de dosis de LSD, ‘muchas de las cuales acabaron en las calles de Estados Unidos a finales de la década de 1960′, según afirma Minnicino en el artículo citado anteriormente.”

“‘¼ Miles de estudiantes universitarios sirvieron como conejillos de Indias. Ellos [los estudiantes] enseguida empezaron a sintetizar sus propios ‘ácidos”.”

“‘¼ la inmensa mayoría de los que se manifestaban contra la guerra fueron a Studentes for a Democratic Society a causa de la sensación de ultraje provocado por la situación en Vietnam. Pero una vez atrapados en la atmósfera creada por los expertos en guerra psicológica del Instituto Tavistock, e inundados con el mensaje de que el hedonismo y la defensa del país era una alternativa legítima a la guerra ‘inmoral’, su escala de valores y su potencial creativo se desvanecieron en una nube de humo de hachís’, escribe el autor en la monografía citada anteriormente.”

“Creando la contracultura”

“La ‘guerra’ cultural abierta, aunque no declarada, contra la juventud norteamericana empezó de verdad en 1967, cuando el Bilderberg, para conseguir sus objetivos, comenzó a organizar conciertos al aire libre. Mediante esta arma secreta, lograron atraer a más de cuatro millones de jóvenes a los llamados ‘festivales’. Sin saberlo, los jóvenes se convirtieron en víctimas de un experimento perfectamente planificado con drogas a gran escala. Las drogas alucinógenas [¼ ] cuyo consumo propugnaban los Beatles [¼ ] se distribuían libremente en estos conciertos. No pasaría mucho tiempo antes de que más de cincuenta millones de los que asistieron (entonces de entre 10 y 25 años de edad) regresaran a casa convertidos en mensajeros y promotores de la nueva cultura de las drogas o de lo que acabó conociéndose como la ‘New Age’.”

“El mayor concierto de todos los tiempos, el ‘Woodstock Music and Art Fair’ al aire libre, fue calificado por la revista Time como un ‘Festival de Acuario’ y como ‘el espectáculo más grande en la historia’. Woodstock se convirtió en parte del léxico cultural de toda una generación.”

“‘En Woodstock -escribe el periodista Donald Phau-, casi medio millón de jóvenes se reunieron para que les drogaran y les lavaran el cerebro en una granja. Las víctimas estaban aisladas, rodeadas de inmundicia, hasta los topes de drogas psicodélicas y se las mantuvo despiertas durante tres días consecutivos, todo con la plena complicidad del FBI y de altos cargos del gobierno. La seguridad del concierto la aportó una comuna hippie entrenada en la distribución masiva de LSD. De nuevo serían las redes de la Inteligencia militar británica las que lo iniciarían todo’, con la ayuda de la CIA a través de su ex director William Casey y de sus contactos con Sefton Delmer del MI6, cuyo contacto Bruce Lockhardt fue el controlador del MI6 de Lenin y Trotsky durante la revolución bolchevique.”

“Tendría que pasar todavía otra década antes de que la contracultura se integrara en el léxico norteamericano. Pero las semillas de lo que era un proyecto titánico y secreto para darle la vuelta a los valores de Estados Unidos se sembraron entonces. Sexo, drogas y rock and roll, grandes manifestaciones en toda la nación, hippies, drogadictos que abandonaban los estudios, la presidencia de Nixon y la guerra de Vietnam estaban desgarrando la misma fibra de la sociedad norteamericana. Lo viejo y lo nuevo chocaban de frente sin que nadie fuera consciente de que ese conflicto formaba parte de un plan social secreto, diseñado por algunas de las personas más brillantes y diabólicas del mundo¼ ”

“La Conspiración Acuario”

“‘En la primavera de 1980 -escribe Lyndon LaRouche en DOPE INC.- se hizo famoso un libro titulado The Aquarian Conspiracy (vendió más de un millón de ejemplares y se tradujo a diez lenguas), que se convirtió de la noche a la mañana en un manifiesto de la contracultura.’ [¼ ] The Aquarian Conspiracy afirmaba que había llegado la hora de que los quince millones de estadounidenses que tomaron parte en la contracultura se unieran para provocar un cambio radical en Estados Unidos. De hecho, este libro fue la primera publicación orientada al gran público que apostaba por el concepto del trabajo en equipo, un concepto que se tenía por lo más virtuoso y rápidamente impulsado por los «gurús» del management.”

“La autora Marilyn Ferguson afirma: ‘Mientras esbozaba un libro aún sin título sobre las nuevas alternativas sociales emergentes, pensé sobre la particular forma de este movimiento, sobre su atípico liderazgo, sobre la paciente intensidad de sus seguidores, sobre sus improbables éxitos¼ ‘.”

“En una conferencia de 1961, Aldous Huxley describió este estado policial como ‘la revolución final’: una ‘dictadura sin lágrimas’ en la que la gente ‘ama sus cadenas’.”

“Zbigniew Brzezinski, asesor de Seguridad Nacional del presidente Carter, fundador del Comité Trilateral y miembro de Bilderberg y del CFR, expresa idénticas ideas en su apasionante obra Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technotronic Era, escrita bajo los auspicios del Instituto de Investigación sobre el Comunismo de la Universidad de Columbia y publicado por Viking Press en 1970.

“Sin utilizar la represión violenta, diseñaron un complejo conjunto de acciones para conseguir un ‘ciudadano pacífico’ para el Nuevo Orden Mundial. [¼ ] También apoyaron nuevos conceptos como ‘Inteligencia Emocional’, que es la capacidad de quererse uno mismo y de relacionarse adecuadamente con los demás. [¼ ] Una tercera vía para convertir a este ‘ciudadano industrial’ en un ‘ciudadano pacífico’ es una gran campaña de marketing para desplegar un inmenso reconocimiento social a los colaboradores con las ONG, como expliqué en mi primer libro La verdadera historia del Club Bilderberg.”

Según Harmon:

“‘Una vez ablandado, [Estados Unidos] ya estaba maduro para la introducción de drogas (especialmente la cocaína, el crack y la heroína) y el inicio de una época que iba a rivalizar con la prohibición y con las enormes sumas de dinero que comenzarían a amasarse’.”

“Vale la pena mencionar que extensos fragmentos de las tres mil páginas de ‘recomendaciones’ dadas al recién elegido Ronald Reagan en enero de 1981 por el CFR se basaron en material tomado del informe ‘Las cambiantes imágenes del hombre’, de Willis Harmon.

“Con luna llena, el 8 de diciembre de 1980, John Lennon fue asesinado por un hombre llamado Mark Chapman. Es poco probable que algún día lleguemos a saber si Mark Chapman fue víctima de una psicosis modelo inducida artificialmente, un asesino al estilo del ‘candidato manchú’ enviado por el Tavistock, la CIA y el MI6 para silenciar a un Lennon que se demostraba cada vez más difícil de controlar.”

“CAPÍTULO 2″ “La máquina de lavado de cerebro perfecta: la MTV”

“Entra MTV, la televisión de la música”

“La MTV, un canal de mercado para música popular de rock y vídeos musicales, inventada y dirigida por Robert Pittman para el público adolescente y joven, se fundó el 1 de agosto de 1981. Hoy forma parte del imperio Viacom (conocido como CBS Corporation, cuyo presidente y director general, Sumner Redstone, es miembro pleno del CFR y cuyo grupo mediático forma parte del Club Bilderberg). Para llegar a los jóvenes sin que la sociedad se diera cuenta del engaño, se hizo necesario ‘disponer de una contrainstitución que predicara valores contrarios a los valores dominantes en la sociedad’. Eso es precisamente lo que hace MTV. ‘Pero para que tal esfuerzo tenga éxito -dice L. Wolfe-, se debe neutralizar la influencia positiva de los padres y de la escuela o, al menos, debilitar su influencia’.”

“‘El modelo para esto [la MTV] fueron los espectáculos teatrales ofrecidos por el prenazi Richard Wagner, en los que se llevaba al público a una especie de éxtasis que luego fue usado conscientemente por los nazis al crear sus propias celebraciones simbólicas, como las reuniones en Nuremberg’. Los especialistas del lavado de cerebros que crearon la MTV eran muy conscientes de su efecto. En un libro sobre la cadena, Rocking Around the Clock, E. Ann Kaplan afirma que la MTV ‘hipnotiza más que cualquier otra [televisión] porque consiste en una serie de textos cortos que nos mantienen en un estado constante de emoción y expectación… Nos quedamos atrapados en la constante esperanza de que el siguiente vídeo nos satisfará por fin. Seducidos por la promesa de la plenitud inmediata seguimos consumiendo infinitamente esos textos cortos’.”

“Durante los cuatro minutos que dura aproximadamente un vídeo musical (los científicos del Tavistock determinaron que cuatro minutos era lo máximo a lo que un sujeto involuntario era susceptible de recibir los mensajes contenidos en los propios programas), ‘una realidad artificial en la forma de ‘contrapuntos’ se inserta en la conciencia, sustituyendo a la realidad cognitiva¼ ‘.”

“‘Si la gente pensara sobre este proceso -escribe Walter Lippmann-, puede que [éste] se acabase’, pero, concluye, ‘la masa de iletrados, de débiles mentales, de profundamente neuróticos, desnutridos y frustrados individuos es tan considerable, que hay motivos para creer mucho más de lo que generalmente creemos. Así pues, [el proceso] se pone al alcance de personas que mentalmente son niños o bárbaros y cuyas vidas son un completo lío, eligen contenidos simples con un gran atractivo popular…’ [¼ ] En Crystallizing Public Opinion, Edward Bernays afirmó que «el ciudadano medio es el censor más eficaz del mundo. Su propia mente es la mayor barrera que lo separa de los hechos…»”

“El espectador que sufre el lavado de cerebro sólo tiene la ilusión de que conserva la capacidad de elegir, al igual que un drogadicto cree que controla su adicción en lugar de que ésta le controla a él. ‘La MTV -dice Ann Kaplan- está diseñada gracias a un conocimiento cada vez mayor de los métodos de manipulación psicológica.’ [¼ ] La media de consumo televisivo diario había subido constantemente desde la aparición de la televisión, de modo que, a mediados de la década de 1970, era la actividad diaria a la que más tiempo se dedicaba después del sueño y el trabajo, con casi seis horas diarias. Desde entonces, con la aparición del aparato de vídeo, de las videoconsolas, ha aumentado mucho más. Los niños en edad escolar pasaban casi tanto tiempo viendo la televisión como durmiendo.”

“‘En la terminología del lavado de cerebro freudiano -expresa Emery- el espectador de un vídeo musical se halla en un estado inducido muy similar al sueño. Le ayuda, o le induce a entrar en ese estado, la aparición repetitiva de colores e imágenes brillantes que abruman la vista, al tiempo que el ritmo pulsátil y vibrante del rock, tiene un efecto similar en el oído.’ No sólo estamos en una época de televisión, sino también en una época condicionada por la televisión -y es una época de intranquilidad, de descontento, de frustración, dirigida a ninguna parte o a muchas partes a la vez-, como es lógico en un entorno en el que [la televisión] es omnipresente.”

“Las siniestras camarillas y los cabilderos del Bilderberg, las esferas clandestinas de influencia y manipulación consciente e inteligente de los hábitos organizados es la más reciente expresión de una campaña de manipulación más profunda para instituir un gobierno mundial sin límites, que no responda ante nadie más que ante él mismo.”

“¼ los principales éxitos vendidos a voluntad a una población desmoralizada en favor del fundamentalismo fanático de un grupo de hombres que no responden ante nadie y que buscan el poder absoluto al precio de la dignidad del hombre moderno, denigrado, humillado y despreciado por los poderes combinados del aparato de manipulación y el lavado de cerebro de Bilderberg-CFR-Tavistock con su equipo de científicos, psicólogos, sociólogos y científicos de la nueva ciencia (New Age, misticismo, etcétera), antropólogos y fascistas decididos a recrear un nuevo Imperio romano.

“Primero empezaron Edward Berneys y Walter Lippmann. Luego, Gallup y Yankelovich. Más tarde, Rees y Adorno, Aldous Huxley y H. G. Wells, Emery y Trist, seguidos por la cultura de las drogas y la Conspiración de Acuario, un supuesto ideal ‘humanista’ a favor de la vieja cultura, salpicado con una pizca de libertad humana en lugar de lo que realmente es: una inteligente manera de degradar a las personas hasta convertirlas en meros animales de granja, negándoles la originalidad de la conciencia humana, que se entienden al instante en todas partes sin necesidad de traducción.”

“La Nueva Edad será una nueva Edad Oscura. Significará la muerte prematura de poco más de la mitad de la población y el olvido deliberado de los mayores logros de la humanidad. Ésta es la ideología totalitaria que propugna el Nuevo Orden Mundial, decidido a gobernar el mundo aunque sea por encima de nuestros cadáveres. [¼ ] ¿Por qué vale la pena defender nuestra civilización? ¿Por qué es un régimen basado en la libertad mejor que las tiranías que hoy oprimen buena parte del planeta? Para algunos, las respuestas a estas preguntas son evidentes, pero para muchos no.”

“CAPÍTULO 3″ “Cómo y por qué el Bilderberg organizó la guerra en Kosovo”

“Esta vez le tocaba el turno a los Balcanes. El ‘plan maestro’ se concibió durante la reunión que en 1996 mantuvieron los miembros del Club Bilderberg en King City, un pequeño enclave de lujo ubicado a unos 20 kilómetros de la ciudad canadiense de Toronto. [¼ ] las guerras de los miembros del Bilderberg en Kosovo y en los Balcanes tuvieron un motivo concreto: drogas, petróleo, riqueza mineral y el avance de la causa del ‘gobierno global’.”

“Estados Unidos y Alemania comenzaron a apoyar a las fuerzas secesionistas en Yugoslavia después de la caída del comunismo en la antigua Unión Soviética, cuando la Federación Yugoslava rechazó ser incorporada a la órbita occidental. John Pilger, un laureado periodista australiano que se dedica a investigar los conflictos bélicos, escribió en The New Statesman: ‘Milosevic era un bruto; también era un banquero que una vez fue considerado como un aliado de Occidente preparado para poner en práctica ‘reformas económicas’ de acuerdo con las exigencias del FMI, el Banco Mundial y la Unión Europea; para desgracia suya, se negó a ceder soberanía. El Imperio no esperaba menos.’ Según el artículo de Neil Clark, un periodista que se especializa en asuntos de Oriente Medio y de los Balcanes, ‘en aquel momento, más de 700.000 empresas yugoslavas permanecían bajo propiedad social, y la mayoría aún era controlada por comités mixtos de directivos y trabajadores, con sólo un 5 % de capital en manos privadas’.”

“Sara Flounders, una activista y periodista afín al Partido Mundial de los Trabajadores, un movimiento pacifista internacional, escribió en un artículo: ‘¼ las condiciones de crédito del Fondo Monetario Internacional y del Banco Mundial requieren la desintegración de todas las industrias públicas. Éste es el caso del petróleo y del gas natural en el Cáucaso y el mar Caspio, así como de las minas de diamantes de Siberia. Quien posea o tenga un interés dominante [...] será quien quiera que gane la lucha armada que se desarrolla en Kosovo. La dominación de la OTAN sobre el terreno pondrá a las empresas estadounidenses en la mejor posición de cara a la propiedad de esos recursos’.”

“Los miembros del Bilderberg, al principio, pretendían ‘inflamar’ a los serbios persiguiendo a los criminales de guerra que ellos albergaban, llevándolos a juicio ante un nuevo Tribunal Internacional. Los serbios, orgullosos y experimentados, esquivaron esta provocación persuadiendo a los sospechosos de nivel más bajo en el escalafón a que se entregaran voluntariamente. Sin embargo, eso no era suficiente. Para enfurecer a los serbios, el Tribunal de La Haya, controlado por Estados Unidos, recurrió a los secuestros ilegales para incitar a la guerra.”

“Esto también explicaría por qué Richard Holbrooke, embajador estadounidense ante Naciones Unidas entre 1999 y 2001, miembro del Bilderberg y del CFR y seis veces candidato al Premio Nóbel de la Paz, insertó una cláusula sobre Kosovo en el acuerdo final. ¿Qué tiene que ver Kosovo con Bosnia? Nada. Pero la idea de Holbrooke era convertir a Bosnia en un ensayo de la futura expansión del Bilderberg en los Balcanes.”

“En busca de una excusa: William Walker entra en escena”

“¼ según explica John Laughland en su artículo ‘La técnica de un golpe de Estado’, era William Walker, miembro del CFR y ‘ex embajador en El Salvador, cuyo gobierno, apoyado por Estados Unidos, estableció escuadrones de la muerte’. En 1985, Walker era ayudante del subsecretario de Estado para América Central y un operador clave en los intentos de la Casa Blanca de Reagan para derrocar al gobierno nicaragüense. El teniente coronel Oliver North, asignado al personal del Consejo Nacional de Seguridad a comienzos de 1981 y despedido el 25 de noviembre de 1986, era el funcionario de la Administración Reagan con mayor implicancia en la ayuda secreta a los contras gracias a los beneficios de la venta de armas a Irán.”

“Según el expediente judicial, Walker fue el responsable de establecer una falsa operación humanitaria en una base aérea en Ilopango, El Salvador, que se usaba en secreto para proporcionar armas, cocaína, municiones y provisiones a los mercenarios contras que atacaban Nicaragua.”

“Walker, que había entregado armas a los contras en Nicaragua y ahora se había transformado en observador de paz, declaró con bombos y platillos ante la prensa mundial que la policía serbia era la culpable de ‘la más horrenda’ matanza que él había visto. Los serbios, que hasta entonces habían evitado hábilmente las provocaciones de la OTAN y del Bilderberg, habían caído. La supuesta ‘masacre’ provocó un pretexto para la intervención. El 30 de enero, el Consejo de la OTAN autorizó el bombardeo. Y el Bilderberg ordenó a su secretario general, Javier Solana, que ‘usara la fuerza armada para obligar a los delegados serbios y de etnia albanesa en las negociaciones de ‘paz’ en Francia a hablar de un marco para la ‘autonomía’ de Kosovo’.”

“Un artículo del 4 de agosto de The Washington Post citaba a ‘un alto funcionario del Departamento de Defensa estadounidense que indicó sólo una cosa que podría provocar un cambio de política: ‘Pienso que si se alcanzaran ciertos niveles de atrocidad que resultaran intolerables, probablemente eso sería un detonante”.”

“Como referencia histórica útil, hay que recordar que los serbios fueron víctimas del peor acto de limpieza étnica, como los 200.000 o más serbios a los que se eliminó de la región de Krajina en Croacia durante la ‘Operación Tormenta’ apoyada por Estados Unidos en 1995 o los 100.000 o más serbios que fueron eliminados de Kosovo por el ELK al final del bombardeo de la OTAN. No hace falta decir que el Tribunal de La Haya, el mecanismo de justicia del Nuevo Orden Mundial, no ha hecho nada para llevar a los autores de esa atrocidad ante la justicia.”

“‘Debían de saberlo, porque de otro modo ¿qué induciría a la Corona a mantener un ejército en esa región donde no había nada de valor excepto el lucrativo comercio de opio? Era muy caro mantener hombres armados en un país tan lejano. Su majestad debía haber preguntado por qué estaban esas unidades militares allí’, se pregunta el doctor John Coleman en Conspirator’s Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of 300.”

Bajo el epígrafe:

“Historia de la implicación de Estados Unidos en el tráfico de narcóticos”

“A diferencia de lo que los libros de historia nos han contado durante años, el nefasto narcotráfico no es territorio exclusivo del estamento criminal, a menos que por estamento criminal entendamos a algunas de las familias más importantes de la historia de Estados Unidos, conocidas como el establishment liberal del Este, cuyos miembros dirigen ese país desde la oligarquía a través de un sistema de gobierno paralelo conocido como Club Bilderberg¼ ”

“Kosovo y la heroína”

“Dos periodistas, Roger Boyes y Eske Wright, en un artículo publicado el 24 de marzo de 1999 en el periódico The Times de Londres afirman que ‘Albania -que juega un papel fundamental en el trasvase de dinero a los kosovares- está en el epicentro del tráfico de drogas de Europa¼ ‘.”

“Albania se ha convertido en la capital del crimen de Europa. Los grupos más poderosos del país son criminales organizados que usan Albania para cultivar, procesar y almacenar un gran porcentaje de las drogas ilegales destinadas a Europa Occidental¼ ”

Continúa mañana.

Fidel Castro Ruz

Agosto 17 de 2010

6 y 20 p.m.

FUENTE: http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/secciones/ref-fidel/art212.html

* * *

Segunda parte

“ABC del tráfico de drogas”

“El opio se cultiva en diversas regiones del mundo: Sudamérica, el Triángulo de Oro de Laos, Burma y Tailandia, Afganistán, Pakistán y Asia central, en una zona conocida como la Media Luna dorada. La gran mayoría de amapolas de opio crecen en una estrecha zona montañosa de unos seis mil kilómetros que va desde el sur de Asia a Turquía pasando por Pakistán y Laos.”

“A estas alturas queda claro que los bilderbergers no se encargan personalmente de transportar las drogas ni de lavar el dinero de los beneficios. De eso se encarga la CIA…”

“…Neil Clark señala lo siguiente: ‘Soros está enfadado no con los objetivos de Bush -extender la Pax Americana y hacer que el mundo resulte más seguro para capitalistas globales como él-, sino con la burda y grosera manera que emplea Bush para conseguirlo’.”

“‘El Plan Marshall propuesto para los Balcanes es una ilusión [...] Financiado por el Banco Mundial y el Banco Europeo de Desarrollo (EBRD), así como por acreedores privados, beneficiará principalmente a las empresas mineras, petroleras y constructoras, e inflará la deuda externa hasta bien entrado el tercer milenio’.”

“Intervención militar de la OTAN”

“La consolidación del poder de la OTAN en el sur de Europa y el Mediterráneo también constituye un paso hacia la ampliación de la esfera de influencia geopolítica del Bilderberg más allá de los Balcanes hacia el área del mar Caspio, Asia Central y Asia Occidental.”

“El fantasma de Travis”

“La primera semana de noviembre de 1999 recibí lo que en principio parecía ser una postal enviada desde Ladispol, un pequeño pueblo en la región del Lazio, Roma, en la costa mediterránea.”

“El día 30 de marzo de 1980 era la fecha en la que nos fuimos oficialmente de la Unión Soviética. Mientras estábamos en Italia, nos establecimos en Ladispol, pueblecito que sería nuestro hogar durante el año siguiente.”

“Salí a la calle. Lloviznaba. Dos niños pequeños saltaban y chapoteaban de charco en charco encantados, dejando las huellas de sus zapatos en las aceras. Crucé la elegante calle bajo los nubarrones y abrí la puerta del pub de la esquina de mi casa. 29 de noviembre de 1999. ¿Qué demonios significaba todo eso? Volví a leer el texto. ‘Me lo estoy pasando bien. Ojalá estuvieras aquí.’ Firmado: Fashoda. ¿Quién demonios era ese tipo?”

“‘¡Fashoda no es una persona sino un lugar!’ Podía sentir cómo me bombeaba el corazón. 29 de noviembre de 1999 [...] De repente me incorporé en mi asiento. ‘¡¡¡Fashoda, Travis Read!!!’.”

“Travis era un maleante al que había conocido durante la reunión del Club Bilderberg en King City en 1996. Era un ladrón de poca monta, indisciplinado y detestable [...] Travis era propenso a ser arrestado y, casi con la misma rapidez, a ser puesto en libertad.”

“Como supe más tarde, Travis Read se había convertido en delincuente para trabajar con los delincuentes.”

“Fue enviado a Sudán por contactos que trabajaban tanto para la CIA como para la Policía Nacional de Canadá, la RCMP [...] Nunca se revelaron los detalles de su viaje a Sudán, pero al igual que en 1899, ese lugar dejado de la mano de Dios atraía a todos los tipos más inapropiados por los motivos más apropiados.”

“‘Si Travis quiere verme, esto se va a convertir en un buen lío’, me dije a mí mismo.”

“Debo admitir que cuando las cosas se ponían mal, siempre confiaba en los antiguos funcionarios soviéticos. Algo intrínseco en ellos hacía que no se fiaran de Occidente y no se dejaban comprar fácilmente, al contrario de lo que los periódicos de masas y los informes de prensa quieren hacer creer.”

“No eran la clase de gente a la que te gustaría traicionar. Yo sabía que estaba a salvo con ellos. Mi abuelo había arriesgado su propia vida a principios de la década de 1950 para salvar las vidas de los padres de estos hombres, agentes del KGB…”

“El 27 de noviembre, a última hora de la tarde, sonó mi móvil. Era Travis. Estaba alojado en algún antro de las afueras de Roma.”

“-Piazza della Repubblica a las cinco y media de la tarde -le interrumpí.

“-Yo pongo las reglas -vociferó Travis.”

“-¿Quieres la información o no? -preguntó Travis.”

“-No lo suficiente como para que me maten -dije fríamente.”

“Travis no se presentó a la reunión. Hacia las ocho y media de la tarde, nos dirigimos rápidamente a su residencia, si es que puede llamarse así, pistolas en mano. El antro de una sola habitación estaba totalmente saqueado. Aun así, no había rastro de forcejeos ni manchas de sangre ni el cadáver de Travis Read. Por lo que yo sé, nunca más se oyó hablar de él.”

“De vez en cuando, el fantasma de Travis se aparece en los rincones más profundos de mi memoria, un recuerdo mórbido de la fragilidad y falibilidad del espíritu humano.”

Así concluye Estulin el capítulo 3.

“CAPITULO 4″

“Bilderberg y la guerra secreta en Afganistán”

“Las causas por las que se desatan las guerras se enraízan en la ideología reflejada en los libros de texto escolares: las naciones van a la guerra por períodos terriblemente largos de tiempo fundamentándose en mentiras, como lo han demostrado la Primera Guerra Mundial y cada uno de los conflictos del siglo XX.

“El famoso historiador Edmund Morgan escribió lo siguiente: ‘La historia nunca se repite. Eso sólo les parece a aquellos que no conocen los detalles.’”

“La cuenca del mar Caspio y Asia Central son las claves de la energía en el siglo XXI. Dos terceras partes de las reservas de petróleo se encuentran en aquella región [...] ‘América quiere que la región esté bajo un total dominio estadounidense’, según afirma James Donan en un artículo publicado en la revista comercial Oil & Gas Journal el 9 de octubre de 2001.”

“‘…Madeleine Albright [la entonces secretaria de Estado bajo la Administración Clinton y una de las personas responsables de la guerra de Kosovo] concluyó que ‘trabajar para moldear el futuro del área es una de las cosas más apasionantes que podemos hacer”, según informa el número de mayo de 1998 de la revista Time.

“La guerra del Golfo permitió que el Pentágono estableciera numerosas bases militares en Arabia Saudí, en los Emiratos Árabes Unidos y en otros lugares.”

“Como ha documentado el profesor Michel Chossudovsky en War and Globalization, la alianza GUUAM (Georgia, Ucrania, Uzbekistán, Azerbaiyán, Moldavia) formada por la OTAN en 1999, está sobre el meollo de la riqueza caspia de petróleo y de gas. Fundamental en GUUAM es Georgia, un Estado cliente de Estados Unidos, donde Mikhail Saakashvili sustituyó como presidente al ex ministro de Asuntos Exteriores soviético Eduard Shevardnadze mediante un golpe de Estado amañado por los americanos y presentado como una revuelta popular y espontánea.”

“Según Project Underground [...] antiguos miembros de los sóviets, de la KGB y del Politburó se aprovechan de la riqueza del petróleo, junto con «una colección formidable de importantes figuras de la Guerra Fría, procedentes, principalmente, del gabinete de George [H. W.] Bush». Los jugadores son los antiguos consejeros de Reagan, Bush y Clinton, como James Baker III (ex secretario de Estado de la Administración Bush padre), Dick Cheney (vicepresidente) y John Sununu (ex jefe de Personal de la Casa Blanca).”

“…Peter Sutherland (de la British Petroleum), la reina Elizabeth II de Inglaterra (accionista principal de British Petroleum, cabeza del Comité de los 300), que están luchando por el control sobre los recursos petroleros y los corredores de los oleoductos que salen de la cuenca del mar Caspio. En 1998, después de la reunión secreta del Club Bilderberg en Escocia, informé en los medios independientes que la OTAN, siguiendo las órdenes del Club que la fundó, dio carta blanca a Rusia para bombardear Chechenia, sabiendo que con eso aumentarían aún más las hostilidades entre esos dos países cuyo odio mutuo tiene más de trescientos años.”

“El oleoducto afgano no era simplemente un negocio, sino un componente clave de una agenda geoestratégica más amplia: control militar y económico total de Eurasia (Oriente Medio y las antiguas Repúblicas soviéticas de Asia Central). George Monbiot lo confirmaba en The Guardian el 23 de octubre de 2001: ‘El petróleo y el gas no tienen ningún valor si no se trasladan. La única ruta que tiene sentido tanto político como económico es a través de Afganistán…’.”

“Después de la caída de la Unión Soviética, la compañía petrolífera argentina Bridas, dirigida por su ambicioso presidente, Carlos Bulgheroni, fue la primera empresa en explotar los yacimientos petrolíferos de Turkmenistán, donde se encuentran unas de las mayores reservas de gas natural del mundo [...] Afganistán es la ruta más corta hacia el golfo para transportar los recursos de gas de Turkmenistán y Uzbekistán desde Asia del Norte Central y Asia Occidental Central.”

“Con gran consternación para Bridas, UNOCAL se dirigió directamente a los líderes regionales con su propia oferta. UNOCAL formó su propio consorcio competidor, dirigido por Estados Unidos, patrocinado por Washington, que incluía a Delta Oil de Arabia Saudí, junto con el príncipe saudí Abdullah y el rey Fahd.”

“Según Ahmed Rashid, ‘la verdadera influencia de UNOCAL sobre los talibanes se basaba en que su proyecto tenía la posibilidad de ser reconocido por Estados Unidos, algo que los talibanes querían asegurarse a toda costa’. [...] En la primavera de 1996, ejecutivos de UNOCAL llevaron al líder uzbeco general Abdul Rashid Dostum (un asesino de masas responsable de la masacre de Dasht-i-Leili en diciembre de 2001, cuando cientos de prisioneros talibanes fueron asfixiados intencionadamente en contenedores de camión metálicos mientras eran conducidos por soldados americanos y de la Alianza del Norte a la prisión de Kunduz, Afganistán) a Dallas para discutir el paso de oleoducto por sus territorios del norte, controlados por la Alianza del Norte.”

“La competencia entre UNOCAL y Bridas, según la describe Rashid, ‘empezó a reflejar la competencia dentro de la familia real saudí’. En 1997, funcionarios talibanes viajaron dos veces a Washington y a Buenos Aires para ser agasajados por UNOCAL y Bridas.”

“Una vez más, la violencia cambiaría el curso de los acontecimientos. En respuesta al bombardeo de las embajadas estadounidenses en Nairobi y Tanzania (atribuido a Osama bin Laden, aunque, según fuentes de Inteligencia francesas, el atentado ha sido trabajo del Mossad israelí), el presidente Bill Clinton disparó misiles de crucero a una tienda vacía en Afganistán y Sudán el 20 de agosto de 1998. La Administración, entonces, rompió las relaciones diplomáticas con los talibanes y las Naciones Unidas impusieron sanciones.”

“Durante el resto de la presidencia de Clinton, no hubo reconocimiento oficial de Afganistán por parte de Estados Unidos ni de las Naciones Unidas. Y ningún avance en el tema del oleoducto.

“Por aquel tiempo, George W. Bush entró en la Casa Blanca.

“Durante los meses finales de la Administración Clinton, los talibanes eran oficialmente un grupo terrorista. Después de casi una década de competición feroz entre el consorcio UNOCAL-CentGas apoyado por Estados Unidos y Bridas de Argentina, ninguna empresa había conseguido un acuerdo para construir un oleoducto en Afganistán [...] George W. Bush reestableció las relaciones con los talibanes. No hay que extrañarse, pues, dado que en 1998 y en 2000, el ex presidente George H. W. Bush viajó a Arabia Saudí en nombre del grupo privado Carlyle Group, el undécimo mayor contratista de Defensa en Estados Unidos, donde se reunió en privado con la familia real saudí y con la familia de Osama bin Laden, según la edición del 27 de septiembre de 2001 de The Wall Street Journal.”

“En uno de los episodios más surrealistas y kafkianos de los acontecimientos previos al 11-S, The Washington Post cita a Milt Bearden, agente de la CIA, que ayudó a establecer a los muyahidines afganos, lamentando el hecho de que Estados Unidos no se tomó tiempo para entender a los talibanes cuando afirmó: ‘Nunca oímos lo que intentaban decirnos [...]. No hablábamos una lengua común. Nosotros decíamos ‘entregad a Bin Laden’. Ellos decían: ‘Hagan algo para ayudarnos a entregarlo”. Pero hay mucho más.”

“De hecho, la relación entre la Administración Bush y el ‘terrorista’ y líder de Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, nunca fue mejor.”

“La evidencia de que la guerra en Afganistán, donde la avaricia multinacional se mezcla con la avaricia y la crueldad de los grandes del petróleo (BP, Shell, Exxon, Mobil, Chevron, etc.) es simplemente irrefutable. Asusta pensar que un rincón dejado de la mano de Dios, controlado por terroristas, pueda convertirse en un punto donde se combinan los intereses de la Administración Bush, Bridas, UNOCAL, la CIA, los talibanes, Enron, Arabia Saudí, Pakistán, Irán, Rusia e India.”

Bajo el epígrafe “Un vaquero en la Casa Blanca”, Daniel Estulin señala que:

“Bush formó su gabinete con personajes de la industria de la energía con estrechos vínculos en Asia Central (Dick Cheney, de Halliburton; Richard Armitage, de UNOCAL; Condoleeza Rice, de Chevron) y llegó al poder gracias a la generosidad de las corporaciones con derechos adquiridos en la región como Enron.”

“La participación de la familia Bush en la política petrolífera de Oriente Medio y Asia Central y sus vínculos profundos con la familia real saudí y la familia Bin Laden existen desde hace generaciones.”

“Cómo los bilderbergers crearon la guerra del Yom Kippur con el objetivo de internacionalizar el petróleo.”

“…Los miembros del Bilderberg no dejan ningún cabo suelto. No trabajan sobre un plan quinquenal. Planean a más largo plazo. A principios de los años setenta, prepararon un plan B, un plan de reparto de petróleo que incluía a Estados Unidos y a otros once importantes países industrializados, estableciendo un mecanismo bajo el que Allen sostiene lo siguiente: ‘El petróleo producido en el interior de Estados Unidos por primera vez en la historia americana sería compartido y asignado en caso de que hubiera otro embargo del petróleo de Oriente Medio’.”

Epílogo del capítulo 4.

“La ‘prueba’ de 1973, preparada por los miembros del Bilderberg, demuestra claramente que el petróleo será utilizado como arma de control. Lo que pasó en 1973 alertó ‘a la población americana y le hizo ver cuánto control podían ejercer los gobiernos extranjeros y las corporaciones multinacionales sobre la nación’, escribe David A. Rivera en Final Warning: A History of the New World Order.”

En el capítulo 5 se aborda:

“MATRIX: Bases de Datos y Programa de Conocimiento Total de Información”

“Por lo general resulta mucho más fácil alcanzar un acuerdo si no hay oyentes. No es una cuestión de secretismo, sino de la capacidad de actuar de una manera más eficaz.

NEIL KINNOCK comisario de la Unión Europea y miembro del Bilderberg

“El Programa de Conocimiento Total de Información (Total Information Awareness, TIA) del Pentágono es un sistema que parte de una frase codificada e implica la disolución gradual de las preciadas libertades individuales de América defendidas por la Constitución en favor de un Estado global, totalitario. La mayor parte de los detalles de este gigantesco sistema de espionaje sigue siendo un misterio. Tras los atentados del 11 de septiembre de 2001, TIA se ha convertido en una red de vigilancia que es ‘representativa de una mayor tendencia que ha aparecido en Estados Unidos y en Europa: el flujo aparentemente inexorable hacia una sociedad bajo vigilancia’.”

“El eje principal de la red de Vigilancia Total es una nueva y extraordinaria modalidad denominada «minería de datos» o descubrimiento de conocimiento, que supone la extracción automatizada de información predictiva oculta a partir de bases de datos.”

“Poniendo en práctica una capacidad incomparable para procesar miles de millones de registros por segundo, Accurint ha compilado el mayor registro de datos de contacto accesible del mundo. Accurint busca más de 20.000 millones de registros que cubren desde mudanzas recientes hasta direcciones antiguas que se remontan a más de 30 años atrás.”

“…cuando se les solicitó más información, los responsables de la empresa se negaron a revelar detalles más específicos sobre la naturaleza y las fuentes de los datos.”

“Según Christopher Calabrese, del Consejo del Programa de Tecnología y Libertad de la Unión de Libertades Civiles Americana, ‘Matrix [...] convierte a cada estadounidense en un sospechoso’.”

“Associated Press ha desvelado que, en enero de 2003, el gobernador de Florida, Jebb Bush, informó al vicepresidente Dick Cheney, a Tom Ridge, que estaba a punto de jurar su cargo como secretario del nuevo Departamento de Seguridad Nacional, y al director del FBI, Robert Mueller, sobre el proyecto secreto que demostraría cómo las Fuerzas de Seguridad podrían usar un programa informático para capturar ‘terroristas’.”

“Aerolíneas Iberia”

“Por otra parte, Iberia, la principal compañía aérea española, ha sido acusada de ceder información confidencial de sus pasajeros al gobierno de Estados Unidos…”

“‘Estados Unidos obliga a las líneas aéreas a proporcionar datos sobre los viajeros’, Andy Sullivan, Reuters, 17 de marzo de 2004.”

“De la misma manera, la NASA también pidió y recibió información confidencial sobre datos de pasajeros de millones de clientes de Northwest Airlines como nombres, direcciones, itinerarios de viaje y números de la tarjeta de crédito, para un estudio similar de minería de datos [...] incidentes han generado docenas de litigios. Esto representaba también una violación de su propia política.”

“‘Northwest Airlines entrega a la NASA información personal sobre millones de pasajeros; la cesión viola la política de privacidad’, Electronic Privacy Information Center, 18 de enero de 2004.

“‘Northwest Airlines cede datos de los pasajeros al gobierno’, Jon Swartz, USA Today, 19 de enero de 2004.”

Un epígrafe lo dedica a:

“Detalles privados a la vista de todos”

“El comisario Almunia, el presidente Borrell y el presidente de la Comisión Europea, José Manuel Barroso, otro bilderberger habitual, hicieron una gran campaña en favor de la aprobación de los derechos fundamentales, supuestamente consagrados en la Constitución Europea [...] Lo que nunca han dicho ni Borrell, ni Almunia, ni Barroso al buen ciudadano europeo es que todos y cada uno de los derechos, según el artículo 51, pueden ser suspendidos si así lo requieren ‘los intereses de la Unión’.”

“Sin embargo, hay mucho más por contar en cuanto a la vergonzosa demostración de traición por parte de la Comisión Europea con respecto a sus propios ciudadanos.”

“Control europeo de las telecomunicaciones: votación en el Parlamento Europeo para aceptar la retención de datos y la vigilancia por parte de las fuerzas de seguridad.

“La votación sobre la retención de datos del 30 de mayo de 2002 (En la anterior legislación Europea, los votos del PPE y PSE reunieron a 526 eurodiputados de un total de 626).

“Statewatch y Reporteros sin Fronteras fueron las únicas organizaciones que informaron sobre lo que resultaron ser decisiones que afectan a cientos de millones de europeos.”

“Básicamente, la grandilocuencia y desafío de los socialistas sobre cuestiones de ley nacional e internacional son una farsa. La alianza de los grupos del PPE y el PSE en el Parlamento Europeo ha demostrado que ellos apoyan las exigencias de los gobiernos de la UE, en lugar de actuar en defensa de la gente y defender los derechos de ciudadanos a la privacidad y libertades civiles.”

“Javier Solana Madariaga, miembro clave del Grupo Bilderberg, antiguo secretario general de la OTAN y secretario general del Consejo de la Unión Europea/Alto Representante para la Política Común de Seguridad y Defensa, en una decisión que la Federación Internacional de Periodistas simplemente bautizó como «un golpe de Estado de verano». Recuerda, lector, que personajes como Javier Solana no representan tu interés ni los intereses de España.”

Después Estulin lo documentó todo a lo largo de 16 páginas.

Su libro incluye un epígrafe nominado “Mi final”.

“La memoria creativa es el oponente más sutil del historiador. El pretexto de olvidar gobierna y deforma todo lo que decidimos recordar abiertamente. La existencia y el mundo parecen justificarse sólo como fenómeno estético. Sólo estético implica no la vida por la vida, sino un contraste agudo a la interpretación moral de la existencia y del mundo.

“Amos Oz, probablemente el novelista israelí más conocido, hizo esta observación: ‘Allí donde la guerra se llama paz; allí donde la opresión y la persecución se denominan seguridad, y el asesinato, liberación, la contaminación del lenguaje precede y prepara la contaminación de la vida y de la dignidad. Al final, el Estado, el régimen, la clase o las ideas permanecen intactos mientras se destruye la vida humana’.”

“Si la democracia es el gobierno del pueblo, los objetivos secretos de los gobiernos y los siniestros grupos de presión son incompatibles con la democracia. La propia idea de esferas clandestinas de influencia dentro del gobierno que emprenden campañas secretas contra la humanidad es, por tanto, ajena a la noción de libertad y debe combatirse con entusiasta determinación, a menos que deseemos repetir los fatales errores de un pasado no tan distante.”

“En una sociedad cada vez más desmembrada, hay algunos elementos que permiten destacar lo que compartimos, lo que tenemos en común, y permiten hacerlo directamente, con dramática intensidad. La dignidad humana y un anhelo genuino de libertad, que se comprende al instante en cualquier lugar del mundo y no necesita traducción, son algunos de los aspectos más valiosos de la tradición universal. Merece todo el apoyo que pueda recibir.

“Finalmente, si criticar los aspectos arrogantes, irreflexivos y abusivos de la sociedad totalitaria hace que a veces haya quien se burle de ti y te etiquete de «antitodo», debería considerarlo como una distinción honorable. Graham Greene dio en el clavo cuando dijo que «el escritor debe estar listo para cambiar de bando en cualquier momento. Su misión es defender a las víctimas y las víctimas cambian».

“DANIEL ESTULIN”

Dedica finalmente ocho páginas y media a la memoria de su abuelo.

“Ésa fue la última vez que lo vi vivo. Un anciano de complexión normal, de noventa y seis años de edad, sentado en su destartalado diván, mirando a través de sus exageradas gafas, encontrándose con mi mirada, pero apenas capaz de reconocer mis ojos. Estaba vivo porque se movía y hablaba, o más bien porque hacía un esfuerzo inhumano para enlazar las letras, que se derramaban en los lugares más recónditos de las profundidades de la conciencia que le quedaba y se negaban con tozudez a unirse para formar sintagmas coherentes. En los últimos meses de su larga vida, a mi abuelo, un hombre que se expresaba con claridad y al que le encantaba el humor y el debate, le faltaban literalmente las palabras. En una especie de acto de crueldad final, el cáncer le robó el lenguaje antes de robarle la vida.

“Con mi billete de avión de vuelta a España en la mano, me pasé por su casa para despedirme. En mi última visita no nos dijimos gran cosa. Yo no encontraba las palabras apropiadas. Estaba sin aliento y me costaba respirar porque sabía que nunca más volvería a verle. ‘Adiós’ era una expresión demasiado simple y demasiado atroz.

“En la mesa de la sala de estar, apoyada contra la pared, había una fotografía de mis abuelos, hecha poco después de su llegada a Canadá en 1983. Mi abuela había fallecido hacía poco más de un año. Mi abuelo, enfermo de gravedad en aquel momento, nunca se recuperó de la pérdida de alguien a quien había amado profundamente durante más de cuarenta años.”

“Tratando por todos los medios de no romper a llorar, sigo recordándome a mí mismo que estas páginas son una reivindicación de la honestidad a expensas de la crueldad y la oportunidad. El tema principal no es la política ni tampoco es una crítica abierta del totalitarismo, sino más bien el latido del corazón de un hombre, y por eso le rindo homenaje. Por eso debería leerse.

“La muerte clínica de mi abuelo se constató el 18 de abril de 1995. Se suponía que había sido la última tarde que había sido él mismo, como dijo Auden acerca del día en que murió Yeats: ‘Él se convirtió en sus admiradores.’ Él se convirtió en un recuerdo; desapareció en las profundidades de su nombre. Es uno de los misterios de la muerte, que debería suponer una mínima diferencia para todos, menos para los allegados a esa persona.”

“Como el resto de nosotros, la gente muere como mínimo dos veces: físicamente y conceptualmente. Cuando el corazón deja de latir y cuando empieza el olvido. Los más afortunados, los más grandes, son aquellos en los que la segunda muerte se pospone de un modo considerable, tal vez indefinidamente [...] Llegaron llamadas desde todos los países y rincones imaginables del Planeta, un tributo a la infinita admiración que él, mi abuelo, un ex agente del contraespionaje de la KGB, infundió en esas personas en las que influyó en sus vidas.”

“Su abuelo era un soldado entre soldados. Se pasó veinticinco años defendiendo al Imperio zarista, a Alejandro II y a Alejandro III. Mi abuelo siguió la tradición militar de la familia. Participó en la Revolución, la guerra civil rusa y las dos guerras mundiales. Mientras defendía a los Minsk en las primeras semanas de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, toda su familia, once hermanos y hermanas, su padre, su madre y una abuela de ciento cuatro años de edad, fueron exterminados por los nazis en Karasy-Bazar, Crimea.”

“Llevaba una vida de verdad. No se limitaba simplemente a vivir.”

“Mi abuelo se había casado en una ocasión, en 1930. Había tenido tres hijos. Entonces llegó la guerra. Combatió en Bielorrusia, defendió Brest, pero le obligaron a retirarse con lo que quedaba del Ejército Rojo debido al avance alemán. En algún momento, en el caos resultante, perdió la pista de su familia. Una madre y tres niños de ocho, cinco y tres años de edad no podían ir tan rápido como el Ejército Rojo o como los soldados nazis. Fueron capturados por los nazis, enviados a un campo de concentración y exterminados.

“La Segunda Guerra Mundial, tal como demuestro en este libro y como he puesto de manifiesto ampliamente en mi primer libro sobre el Club Bilderberg, fue astutamente financiada por los Rockefeller, los Loeb y los Warberg. El príncipe Bernhard, fundador del Club Bilderberg, también estaba implicado. Era nazi. La familia real británica simpatizaba en su mayoría con los nazis, al igual que la mayor parte del Eastern Establishment «liberal» de Estados Unidos, el entramado plutocrático que domina la vida económica, política y social de ese país. Hitler, la bestia, fue creado por los mismos que hoy asisten en secreto a las reuniones del Club Bilderberg, el CFR y la Comisión Trilateral. La historia, para esta gente, es una pizarra en blanco en la que defecar contra la angustia de otros. ¿Alguien me puede culpar por despreciar tanto al Bilderberg y a sus homólogos?”

“En mi caso, mi abuelo sigue siendo mi piedra angular -compañero de viaje- incluso después de la muerte. Está tan ausente como presente.

“Tiempo y espacio, los trucos del mundo herido por todas partes, el montón de residuos que llamamos historia, que también representan sus éxitos. Son sus éxitos. Como el tiempo, conservan la magia que lo hace desaparecer.

“Me acuerdo de él sobre todo cuando llega su cumpleaños. Pero, para mí, este año es diferente. La edad es una acumulación de vida y de pérdida. La edad adulta es una serie de líneas cruzadas. He traspasado un umbral. De ahora en adelante, estoy solo…”

He recogido en la segunda parte de esta Reflexión gran cantidad de las líneas finales de su libro. Explican su desprecio por la odiosa institución del Club Bilderberg.

Es terrible pensar que las inteligencias y los sentimientos de los niños y los jóvenes de Estados Unidos son mutilados de esa forma.

Hay que luchar ahora para evitar que sean conducidos a un holocausto nuclear, y recuperar todo lo que sea posible su salud física y mental, e idear las formas en que los seres humanos sean liberados para siempre de tan terrible destino.

Fidel Castro Ruz

Agosto 18 de 2010

5 y 54 p.m.

http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/secciones/ref-fidel/art213.html ]]> http://kanaanonline.org/ebulletin-en/?feed=rss2&p=313 http://kanaanonline.org/ebulletin-en/?p=310 http://kanaanonline.org/ebulletin-en/?p=310#comments Thu, 22 Jul 2010 16:06:38 +0000 masad http://kanaanonline.org/ebulletin-en/?p=310

Adel Samara

· Why does the working class, the producers, pay the price for crises caused by bourgeois?

Analyzing the era from the Marxist political economy perspective is inadequate if not based on the basic challenge of Marxism, that the philosopher’s mission is not to interpret the world, but to change it. Following the collapse of the “Socialist Block” many ex-socialists gave up the revolutionary spirit, but when the financial/economic crisis of 2008 occurred some of them recovered their Marxist beliefs, though in a shy manner. Even in the absence of any crisis in the capitalist countries, our role, and even the justification of our existence as socialists, is to analyze and criticize the capitalist system from a standpoint of destroying it. It is not sufficient to analyze and abstractly deconstruct the capitalist mode of production, because the deconstruction will remain neutral if it lacks the class perspective, political consciousness, and the increase level of conflict with the bourgeois to assure continuity of struggle. Socialism, as the negation of capitalism, must be established deliberately over capitalism’s ruins. Any radical analysis of the current capitalist crisis, if not devoted to pave the way for the humanity and vanguard of the popular classes to destroy the capitalist mode of production, will provide an indirect and free advice or prescription for capitalism to benefit from the Marxist analysis.

The resolutions of G8, Semi-Great, the 12, especially the last meeting in Toronto, were political more than economic, e.g.: every state must decrease its deficit by fifty percent in three years and apply tough policies of austerity and impose more taxes, every state has to choose the proper way and appropriate means of applying the resolutions…etc.

This means that it is still an economic world order rather than a political one, and that the national state still grasps the lead in spite of the economic globalisation. Every leader of the 20 represented the interests of the bourgeoisie class of his nation.

Although the bourgeoisie media repeatedly described the crisis as financial, it is in fact deeper than that. It is an outcome of human behavior. A class which controls and manages the financial institutions, exploits labor of the working class as the producer of value which crystallizes in commodities, pay lower wages, impose heavy taxes, and avoid imposing rules and regulations of the economy especially in the field of banks lending.

G8, G20 Summit

The US still adopts the bailout policy and borrows from China; European leaders argue that governments must cut their budgets in order to restore confidence. But in both cases, banks, even in the US which supported her banks with more than a trillion dollar, decided since the beginning of the crisis to minimize lending even between each other. While the crisis hits Europe today, banks did not lend, corporations continue lay off, no new jobs are created and the citizens minimize their consumption trying to repay as much as possible. The EU governments turned to extract taxes from the public!

This economic situation lacks the necessary conditions needed to face a crisis because to do so you need a strong economy to minimize the deficit. In this case money liquidity is necessary. People must have jobs to consume and repay debts and this is not the case. What is going on is the opposite! The capitalist regimes impose even heavier taxes to collect the money liquidity needed.

This is the main difference between the US and Europe now. The US has been supported by borrowing from China; the Chinese surplus is guaranteed by US budget bonds. The US uses the borrowed money to buy products of China. The relationship between the US and China is bourgeoisie class cooperation, which mainly affects the Chinese working class on the one hand and the popular classes in the US on the other. Many US corporations transfer their businesses to China looking for lower wages to keep the rate of profit high through two means:

· We must note that Obama asked the 20 leaders to stop depending on the US market as the last resort. This might be because the US is mainly interested in buying the US commodities produced by the US companies in China.

· The strengthening of US/China trade might be the reason why China did not provide loans to Europe. In addition to lending the US, China is keen to invest in Africa.

From economic point view the world is divided into four blocks, three of them attended the Toronto summit, while the fourth has never been considered or invited, those blocks are:

1. The so called growing Asian economies; this description is vague in two ways

a. Not all Asian economies achieved growth

b. Even those who register growth, e.g. China and India, suffer deepening social imbalances due to the harsh exploitation of the working classes.

2. The US economy registers a weak and slow growth which is not guaranteed.

3. The European block economy which is currently affected by the crisis

4. And the forth block which is the rest of the world nations which are poor and always suffer from a crisis.

The contradiction between the four blocks obstruct regimes consensus on decisions or resolutions to face the crisis. This might be one of the reasons why the summit never produces substantial economic resolutions. A reading of what is behind the resolutions, what are between lines, shows that there are two declarations of wars:

· First the war against popular classes all over the world through austerity programs, banks free choice to provide loans, corporations’ lays off and finally the continuous price hikes especially for basic needs.

· The consensus on tightening pressure on Iran and North Korea as a preparation for war.

In the Service of One Class!

Banks are not an invisible hand which comes down from sky to manage crises and solve problems on earth and then return peacefully; but they are rather places, or ever, hills of money. Still this is not the real situation, it is only an abstract. Banks in reality are owned and managed by human beings, owners and managers, who exploit people while selling and buying. In the end money accumulates money! Even during the crisis they aim to accumulate money, and will do that forever. They will keep aiming at reaching unlimited rate of profit.

Banking elite interests are deeply connected with other bourgeois social elites in the capitalist system, the industrial capitalism, the administrative/ruling political elite, the military industrial complex and that of media. Call them social classes or elites, they are ruling in the center and even the periphery in several indirect manners and mechanisms. This form of tight and material relationship between these elites is the reason why the regimes did not, until the moment, decide to touch the principles of neo-liberalism economic policies. It is so clear that de-regulation let banks lend money to people who are unable to repay considering the fact that wages in the US in particular have been deteriorating for the last decade. This is due to the fact that corporations either down-size or migrate to countries of low wages. The other four elites were protecting by the financial one which is one of them.

The reason behind providing sub-prime loans as an adventure was motivated by searching for outlets to circulate the highly accumulated Lazy Capital. Capital is not lazy in nature, but when there are no outlets it became idle. That is why capitalists must find places/areas for investment in mortgages and/or wars. War is a capitalist industry! If the calculations of direct imperialist war, against Iraq and Afghanistan, were wrong, imperialists push many dependent classes, ethnicities in the periphery to launch civil wars and/or wars between countries to consume weapons, i.e. imperialism industrializes wars.

The world markets witnessed a sharp increase of food prices three years before the economic/financial crisis, but despite that fact, prices of all commodities never declined. This is due to the capitalists of the centre’s tight control over markets and their policies to substitute the decrease of consumption by maintaining prices hike as mechanism to maintain high rate of profit.

Ironically, the price of oil is most arguable one, while the rest of vital and costly commodities which are mainly produced in the centre are never challenged by that argument, protest and even conspiracy. On the one hand this contradicts the primitive crystallization of a globalized class, on the other it proves that there are deep contradictions inside the same semi-class, especially because the oil countries control a commodity that is available in a rental manner and they are not main components of the globalized highly advanced industrial/capitalist class. The issue of oil refers to the fact that center still internally cohesive when it comes to the centre/periphery relationship.

Who Will Pay?

Although the first symptoms of the crisis started at the financial level and were caused by the same financial institutions which lend sub prime loans, it went deeper into real economy. Its manifestations are increased unemployment, layouts, downsizing, and tough banks lending conditions. But the most painful decision by the ruling classes is still the remedy by adopting austerity that reduces public spending and imposes higher taxes over the popular classes. These measures are always analyzed by an abstract discourse. For instance, if the government minimizes expenditures consumption will decline and loans repayment will deteriorate, and if government increases spending inflation will rise and it will harm exports even if the government decides to reduce exchange rate of its currency’s exchange…etc. These abstract economic analyses are used to hide the painful reality of deteriorating living conditions and exploitation of the popular classes which is the last resort for capitalism to manage the crisis.

Why is it possible for the system to take this tough decision? It is because the working class movement is weak enough and the revolutionary movement still in decline.

War is another Alternative

One of the main components of globalism is the replacement of the Cold War by a hot one, i.e. from the Cold War between the super-powers to a hot war against the periphery. The US ruling class is the leading power for the new wars considering the fact that its industrial share in the world had declined from more than 40 percent in the 1960s to nearly 19 percent today, but it is still the most powerful military power and weapons production. It is of the interest of the industrial military complex in the US to launch direct and indirect wars as a vital business for its economy.

War for capitalism is leverage to the economy through destruction and re-construction, control of the wealth of the poor nations, achievement of social consensus behind the regime (Support the Troops: the way how the US regime recruit masses to support its imperialist aggressions all over the globe), and at the same time absorption of internal social tension especially those which are caused by austerity measures.

The intensive media campaign against Iran and to a certain extent against North Korea are indications that the US and the EU are building a military coalition to launch wars. This campaign tries to proof that Iran is a direct danger for the world “peace” as a manipulation to prepare world public opinion to accept war against Iran. Until now there are no hints that a popular movement against war is on the process to confront the bourgeois calls for war, nor a social movement strong enough to challenge the austerity measures. This gives the ruling classes in the west and the Zionist Ashkenazi Regime a chance to accelerate their preparation for a war especially against Iran.

While challenging war mongers must be the job of a worldwide human movement, it must start first and foremost in the countries of the capitalist centre. This must be on the top of the agendas of Civil Society in the center which is in fact not there yet! Although we witnessed a few demonstrations against war and globalism in the last few years, although it is a good popular activity separating itself from the bourgeois crimes against humanity, but it still lags behind what is really needed. Civil Society organizations, socialist, communist, leftist parties and women activists in the west must show more resistance to the two forms of wars launched by the bourgeois, the economic war at the domestic level and the colonial war at the international level.

Finally, as long as the bourgeois in the center do not give up neo-liberal policies and de-regulation on the one hand, and keep imposing higher taxes on the popular classes on the other, it means that capitalism is still in strong enough to solve the crisis it caused at the cost of the working class which is still unorganized and unable to make a revolutionary challenge to the system as the sole and final alternative to the capitalism.

:::::

* Many thanks to Barada Yousef for her assistance in editing this article.

Dr. Adel Samara

The end of May and the beginning of June 2010 witnessed hot events regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict. Definitely those events were not deliberately planned to take place at the 43^rd anniversary of the 5 June occupation of the West Bank and Gaza strip, although they are related to it.

In this context it might be useful to make a comparison between the people who stood behind those events, especially non-Arabs, i.e. Germans, Americans and British.

History did not start in 1967!

Before making the comparison it is important to point out the fact that the 1967- war did not mark the beginning of the Arab-Israeli conflict, for the conflict dates back to the last decades of the 19^th century when Western Capitalist regimes facilitated the immigration of the White Jewish settlers (Ashkenazi) to settle and occupy Palestine then under the Ottoman Rule and British mandate between 1917-1948. The immigration process reached its peak by the expulsion of nearly a 780 thousand Palestinians from three quarters of their homeland in 1948.

Since the defeat of the ruling Arab regimes in 1967, which resulted in the occupation of the remaining part of the Palestine (the West Bank and Gaza Strip), Arab rulers and leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leaders have been subjugated to the imperialist and Israel (Zionist Ashkenazi Regimes - ZAR), which insist that Palestinian should give up their Right of Return (RoR) to their homeland, a right that is historic, national, human in addition to the fact that it was granted by UN Resolution No. 194 of December 1948 following the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians between 1947-1948 and the exodus of the those who managed to escape the massacre.

This deliberate deformation and compromise is the main reason why many supporters of the Palestinian cause fail to understand the roots and real cause of the conflict, a complex matter that requires some explanation. Part of this explanation is to disclose the truth and to show how Arab comprador capitalist classes easily and bluntly betrayed their nation and how many intellectuals were bribed by the rulers and normalize with the three enemies of the Arab nation: the rulers themselves, the ZAR and imperialism. (See below).

The Honest Helen Thomas

Vs. the Hypocrite German Minister

Following a meeting, in the last days of June 2010, between the Palestinian Self-Rule ministers and their German counterparts, Jedo Festervilly, in Berlin, the latter wrote an article in a local Palestinian newspaper, al-Quds, stated that: “Germany is committed to its moral responsibility concerning the security of Israel and its right to exist”.

The German minister lacked the diplomatic politeness, intelligence and courage to ask Israeli rulers where “Israeli” borders end before committing himself and his government to guarantee “the Israeli” security. Israel has never declared where its borders start and where they end. Perhaps it starts from Bavaria in Germany!

From our point of view as Palestinians, “Israel” is considered a state of settlers, and thus doesn’t have a right to extend its authority over our country, historic Palestine. So the settlers have no borders here as long as Palestine belongs to its people. The minister must differentiate between a future co-existence in a liberated Palestine and what he pretends is “the Israeli formal state security”, i.e. to give inhabitants security doesn’t mean that the land of others belongs to them.

If the German minister were really genuinely apologestic for the Nazi massacre against German Jews, he must say that Bavaria is open, at any time, for German Jews who were expelled from their German motherland to return. In terms of borders and peoples’ right of return to their homeland, Bavaria should be considered part of “the Israeli” borders.

The colonial mentality of the minister blinded him from seeing that he, like his previous British colonial foreign minister Balfour who “donated” our Homeland to the Jewish settlers in 1917. That immoral “donation”, which is entitled Balfour Declaration, was never made because the West was sympathetic with the Jews who belong to many nations and have the same religion but do not form a nation, or because they feel sorry because of the Nazi massacre, but it is rather because the center of the capitalist countries including Britain and Germany needed a watch dog and aggressive base in the Arab Homeland to play the role, to do the job of fragmenting the Arab Homeland and Arab nation, blocking development in our region and guarantee the flow of wealth to the center. Capitalists never pray for God, but for an endless accumulation of profit from and our region that contains endless resources. The result of creating the ZAR was launching a continuous and prolonged massacre against our people and region to “solve” an intensive one against the Jews who comprehend and internalize the lesson and did the “job” very “well”.

The minister never dared to ask “Israel” to stop or to apologize for the extended massacre against our people and the Region. What Germany did is the opposite: donating to “Israel” a lot of military/terrorist assistance, i.e. the motor of Merkaba tank (Daimler Benz) and nuclear submarines on the one hand and sending warships to block the so-called weapons flow to Gaza. What a humanitarian regime and what a liberal minister who shakes hands with the fascist Zionist foreign minister Lieberman who states openly that he wants to evict the rest of Palestinians from their Homeland!

“Israeli” Borders are that of the Globe

This address is not a product of “Eastern” imagination as many whites might pretend. First because “Israel” never defined its borders, and secondly because the crime/massacre against the peaceful Turkish ship in the middle of the Mediterranean which carried human assistance, food and medicine to the people of Gaza. If the “Israeli” borders reach Cyprus, where do they actually end?

Nobody hears any western politicians including the German foreign minister condemning or even blaming Israel for the massacre which took place on 31 May 2010 against Flotilla Ship. I would like to remind the German minister that a few German ladies and gentlemen where on the deck of the same Turkish ship including Dr. Matthias Jochheim (IPPNW), Prof. Norman Paech (Beirat IPPNW), Adel El Sakka (Palestinian Society Germany), the two ladies of the party “Die Linke” members of the German. In this case is the German minister going to take them to the court for smuggling milk to Gaza’s children?

This massacre encouraged some to speak up bluntly that Palestine is for Palestinians. Helen Thomas is one of those. She knows the truth that Jewish settlers came from Germany, Poland and the United States of America and they must fight for their RoR to these countries. One of the meanings of her speech is that Judaism is a religion and not a nationalism. Therefore, the Jews have occupied Palestine by brut force. Despite the fact that Helen Thomas failed to mention that center of capitalist order was and still is arming the very same Jewish settlers. While the Metropolitan of each white settler colonization (USA. Canada, Australia, New Zealand … etc), is one white capitalist colonial country, the Metropolitan of “Israel” is the world capitalist order.

Moreover, the Jewish settlers are not from the three countries mentioned by Mrs. Thomas, USA, Germany and Poland, they are from at least one hundred nations including the Arab nation. The ZAR is a little “United Nations” compacted in Palestine. The result of creating this “Israel” was the eviction of our people to be scattered all over the world, i.e. to be the “new Jews”. The main difference between us and them is that they were, and most of them still are, citizens in their original homelands while we became refugees. They never demand their RoR because they left their countries deliberately to occupy our country, while we insist on our RoR.

The reason why Helen Thomas lost her temper was because she knows that we offer them the chance/choice to live together in our Homeland in a socialist state as part of the Arab socialist Homeland, while they want to evict the rest of us aiming at making Palestine a “pure” Jewish state and maintaining “Israel” as an aggressive base for western capitalism in its era of globalization.^[1] This reminds me of the term Ilan Pappe used to describe the events which took place in historic Palestine between 1947-1948 against the Palestinian people, Ethnic Cleansing. Pappe’s definition was inadequate because ethnic cleansing takes place against a nation mainly once and for a certain period of time, but in case of Palestinian ethnic cleansing it has been carried out till the present time. What they did and still do against us is different. They have never been satisfied with the 1948 occupation and they have been committing ethnic cleansing since then: on a daily basis Jerusalem, confiscating land in the WB, and making Gaza the largest jail in history. What they did and still do is a total destruction of our geography, social fabric, class structure, demography, economy and even they culture which they did not hesitate to steal.

All Colonizers are the same!

From the Palestinian point of view, Britain bears the utmost guilty in creating and supporting the ZAR. Britain did not change. When it was great and even today it is still the capitalist country that is thirsty for accumulation of wealth and profit, and the white criminal culture that is based on capitalist interests. The main industry of capital is war. For this reason Britain was the first capitalized country which launched wars around the world and the last one when it supported the criminal acts of USA against Iraq as both of them declared war on that country.

The current British Regime never blamed the ZAR for the Flotilla crime. As a solution for its massacre against the Turkish/international human solidarity ship, it rudely offered a colonial racist suggestion: the British “initiative” was to cancel the investigation of the Flotilla massacre in an exchange for reducing the siege on Gaza, as if that siege is legal and as if Gazans were the ones who committed the crime, a sin in exchange for another!

The British Counsel and Normalization

Britain has been launching wars against our people in a systematic manner. It is a shame that Britain neither apologized for the creation of the “Israel”- ZAR in Palestine, nor any Palestinian political or even cultural body demanded a British apology.

British politics had never spared time to attack our people as if we are the German Nazi who bombarded London during the imperialist White “World” War II! Britain never blamed “Israel” for 2008-2009 massacres in Gaza which left 1400 victims, women, infants and elderly and destroyed thousands of homes. Britain actually participated in the suggested siege on Gaza borders to stop arms smuggling to show that “Israel” is an innocent peaceful victim, while the truth is, the siege was and still is to stop food and medicine to Gaza! Who knows how many British-made weapons were used in the ZAR aggression against Gaza?

But when a handmade so-called “rocket” falls (18 March 2010) on a vacant area in historic Palestine which was occupied by the Jews in 1948, the British foreign ministry was the first to condemn that act. No Palestinian or Arab ruler or intellectual protested against this British manipulation and hypocrisy. This is the result of normalization with enemies which harm Arab dignity and threatens the future of our Arab Homeland.

One of the British bases for normalization activities in our country is the British Cultural Counsel called the British council. This Counsel was burnt it in second Intifada (2000) as it was hated and rejected by Palestinian masses. Following that, Great Britain opted to rent a place in the middle of a large building which consisted of many other local and foreign offices.

This same Counsel is trying to prove that it is a cultural place only. One of its activities is a play called “One Little Step” (al-Quds , 13 March 2010) in cooperation with the Palestinian Self-Rule Ministry of Culture. The British Counsel held panel discussions and workshops attended by local intellectuals to analyze the play. Unfortunately, none of those asked in advance why should they participate? Did not ask the British why their foreign ministry didn’t condemn the massacre in Gaza? Why the British did not apologize for the creation of “Israel”-ZAR?

This would have had the meaning of anti-normalization activity and the struggle against the current and historic enemies of our people and nation. Anti-normalization shouldn’t be limited to fight the ZAR, it must act against any regime that helps the creation and aggression of that regime, occupy any Arab land, build military bases in an part of the Arab Homeland, exploit any Arab wealth even when the rulers of this or that Arab country facilitate the exploitation of its people’s resources. Those Arab regimes are in fact the internal enemies of the nation, and that is why they are the third string of the triangle against our nation: the ZAR, the imperialist powers, and the Arab comprador ruling classes.

Background Article on the Current Impasse in Thailand

By Danielle Sabai

[This article was written before the Thai government's crushing of the Red Shirts' protest site in Bangkok on May 19, 2010. However, it provides important background to the events. This article first appeared at Danielle Sabai's Asian Left Observer.]

May 17, 2010 — The political crisis engulfing Thailand is not a clap of thunder in an otherwise calm sky. The discourse about a country where “everyone lives in harmony and where there is no class struggle but a people united behind its adored sovereign” has nothing to do with reality. For several decades, the Thai people have been subjected to authoritarian regimes or dictatorships and a king in their service. The Thai élites have however not succeeded in preventing regular uprisings against the established order, including those in 1973, 1976 and 1992, all repressed by bloodbaths.

Since 2005, Thailand has faced a new and deep political crisis, longer than the previous ones, and whose outcome cannot be, as in the past, the stifling of the aspirations of the Thai people. The economic boom of the period from 1986-1996 has brought about irreversible changes in society, notably the formation of a working class of around 7 million and structural political reforms. Unlike in previous crises, ordinary Thais - peasants, urban workers and the middle classes of Bangkok, the less well-off - have become conscious of their political weight and begun to make demands.

The 1990s: Eruption of civil society

The roots of the current conflict are anchored in the depths of Thai society. The economic and political upheavals of the 1990s upset a balance which dated from the 1930s and had been established with the end of the absolute monarchy. After the military coup of 1991 and the repression of 1992, civil society entered what had previously been a very restricted political field.

Following a process lasting several years and a public consultation, a 16th constitution, called the “constitution of the people”, was adopted in 1997. For the first time in the history of Thailand, the two chambers were elected by universal suffrage. The executive and legislature were separated. The constitution contained safeguards to combat corruption and defend human rights. If it allowed real democratic advances, it nonetheless had numerous limitations. It was necessary to hold a university degree to be a member of parliament. A sign of the contempt the élites have towards the people and a good way of maintaining privileges. The party list system was criticised by the smaller political formations which found it difficult to elect MPs. The electoral procedures set up tended to strengthen the two party system so as to ensure political stability: between 1995 and 1997, Thailand had four governments! For the same reasons, the role of the prime minister was strengthened. This was used by Thaksin to strengthen his own power when he was prime minister.

The repression of 1992 led to a reflection on the need for transparency in politics and on the role and place of the military inside society. For many years, the army would be confined to barracks. But in reality it never renounced the exercise of power and the civilian governments never challenged its privileges. The army remained a powerful financial and political institution which exercised its power behind the scenes.

The first half of the 1990s also saw strong economic growth and an acceleration of industrialisation. Hundreds of thousands of rural youth, in particular women, left to work in manufacturing and services in and around Bangkok. Wages were low and living conditions difficult but it was still preferable to working the land, which was not very fertile in the case of Isaan. Work in Bangkok did not simply offer a possibility of earning money and helping parents and children left behind in the village. This migration of young people to the capital is indicative of the transformations underway in Thai society : it offered them the possibility of being “Thansamai”, access to a different, “modern”, lifestyle, of freeing themselves from “traditions” which were seen as backward and onerous [1]. As is the case everywhere else, Thaïs aspire to the same standard of living that they see on television and they would like to enjoy the fruits of growth.

The economic boom ended suddenly with the outbreak of the great financial crisis of 1997 which hit Thailand first before spreading to a series of Asian countries. Many companies went bankrupt. Those linked to services protected by the state came out best. This was true of the enterprises owned by Thaksin Shinawatra, a billionaire who had made his fortune in telecommunications through licences and concessions which he had obtained from different governments and the military in the 1990s [2]. The political and economic stability caused by the crisis strengthened him in the idea of launching a political career. The political withdrawal of the army had opened up a political space. In the business milieu, the idea spread that the army was no longer able to manage public affairs in an increasingly complex and globalised world. In 1998, Thaksin founded his own party, the Thai Rak Thai (TRT — Thaïs Love Thaïs) with some of the vast wealth that he had emerged from the crisis with. In 2001, he was elected on the basis of a political programme which attempted to respond to a variety of sometimes contradictory social demands. Once elected, he implemented a “pro-poor” policy which considerably improved the lives of millions of ordinary people. Thaksin created a health system which was virtually free of charge (less than a euro for a medical consultation), helped indebted peasants through a debt moratorium of several years’ length, and set up a micro credit system to favour development projects in the villages. It should not however be forgotten that he is a millionaire businessman whose policies serve his own interests first. Corruption, authoritarianism and nepotism prospered while he was prime minister.

Nonetheless, for the first time a Thai politician had taken an interest in the fate of millions of his citizens. His policies clearly followed a classic populist tradition: satisfying the demands of the peasants and workers in order to provide himself with an electoral base and the stability necessary for business to prosper. Meanwhile, muzzling the workers’ movement by maintaining laws restraining trade union activity and an electoral system which, by obliging urban workers to vote in their rural region of origin, blocked the emergence of left wing parties. The war on drugs, waged early in his first term, led to thousands of deaths and arbitrary arrests. Thaksin also resumed the war against the Malay minority in the deep south of Thailand. Despite this state violence, which Thaksin had demagogically used to strengthen his legitimacy, the social aspects of his policies made him immensely popular. This made him the sole Thai politician to win a consecutive second term. He was triumphantly re-elected in 2005.

The germs of a new political crisis

The bases of a new political crisis were now in place. When Thaksin came to power, Thailand had been led for nearly 70 years by an élite which held money and power: the army, the higher bureaucracy, the monarchy and some big industrial families. They shared a deep contempt for the people who they saw as uncultured and not suited for democracy. More than twenty coups since the end of the absolute monarchy in 1932 attest to it. They are all in favour of democracy, but a “Thai version” of democracy that would allegedly be “better adapted” to Thai history, values and culture [3]. In opposition to Western values, “Asian values” were supposed to stress the primacy of the group over the individual, respect for others, a sense of community, frugality, education, acceptance of hierarchy [4]. In fact, all this served as ideological justification for a very inegalitarian system and deeply anti-democratic laws allowing a few among the privileged to enrich themselves and remain in power. The citizens took no part in the decisions of those who governed while the latter were not motivated to account for their actions. The feeling of belonging to the nation was inculcated in people asked to subordinate their own interests to those of the county. At the heart of this ideological construction, the king played a central place. As “father” of the nation that he incarnates, he regularly visits his “children” to listen to their problems, which he reinterprets “properly”. The monarchy is at the centre of (very) many charitable works and development projects in the countryside. The “self sufficiency economy”, the economic “theory” elaborated recently by the king illustrates the paternalist mechanisms and maintenance of social hierarchies very well. . “Sufficiency has three key principles: moderation; wisdom or insight; and the need for built-in resilience against the risks which arise from internal or external change” [5]. The message is clear: the peasants and the poor are asked to make do with what they have. If the poor are poor, it is because they have not implemented solutions adapted to the resources at their disposal. Emergency laws like the ISA (Internal Security Act) and the crime of lèse-majesté help smother any opposition.

The political game is completely emptied of content. Political links are above all business and clientelist relations: large scale vote buying and collusion between business and politics. In the 1990s, more than half of MPs originated from the world of business [6]. The different political parties do not represent any alternative but are set up to participate in government coalitions where they hope to benefit from opportunities to do business. A sort of return on investment - establishing an electoral base costs a lot of money.

On the other hand, the improvement in living conditions brought about by the economic boom of the 1986-96 period decreased social tensions and demands. With the crisis of 1997, things changed. Hundreds of thousands of factory workers in the Bangkok area were dismissed and many returned to the countryside without payment. The idea developed by Asia’s ruling élites (in particular Mahathir in Malaysia and Lee Kwan Yew in Singapore) that economic growth should come before democracy was seriously shaken. The Thaksin years made people conscious that the electoral game could also benefit the less well of. It was possible to implement redistributive and more egalitarian economic policies.

Thaksin benefited fully from the system. During his first term, he favoured “friendly” companies and placed “loyalists” at the head of the army. The traditional establishment felt threatened: the financial opportunities, the juiciest contracts were escaping them. The king’s privy council lost control over army promotions, the main lever of maintenance of the order. The Democrat Party, the main opposition party allied to the establishment, was not in a position to compete with the TRT at the electoral level. It had not won an election for nearly 10 years. The king himself felt threatened. Thaksin’s popularity competed directly with his own. The traditional order was challenged.

The countryside elects governments, Bangkok overthrows them

The establishment sought by every means to free itself of Thaksin. An opportunity came in January 2006, when he decided to sell his company Shin Corp to Temasek, a company owned by the state of Singapore. Royalist forces organised around Sondhi Limtongkul launched a nationalist campaign for the resignation of the prime minister and succeeded in linking together the numerous struggles of the time against the privatisation of the public electricity company EGAT, against the free trade agreements with the USA, against decentralisation in education and so on. However, despite numerous demonstrations against him and a public intervention by the king, Thaksin triumphed again in the elections of April 2006.

It was too much. The army took the military option, undoubtedly with the approval of the “palace”. [7] On September 19, 2006, while Thaksin was abroad at the UN, a new military coup was organised, this time without any bloodshed. The objectives advanced were the fight against corruption and the necessity of restoring the “unity of the country” which had been disrupted by several months of uninterrupted demonstrations. The establishment, the royalist forces but also a great part of the intelligentsia and middle classes celebrated the overthrow of the “corrupt” Thaksin.

In the year following the coup, everything was done to destroy Thaksin’s instruments of power: the Thai Rak Thai (TRT) was dissolved, 111 MPs from the party were deemed ineligible for the five years to come. Part of Thaksin’s assets were frozen (nearly 2 billion dollars). A new constitution was written under military diktat. However, despite the maintenance of martial law in Thaksin’s bastions in the north and north-east, the military could not prevent a victory for the People’s Power Party (PPP), heirs of the TRT, at the election of December 23, 2007. The victory of the forces allied to Thaksin revived the crisis. Very quickly the new government of Samak Sundaravej envisaged amending the new constitution to forestall a new dissolution by the judiciary which had been considerably strengthened by the new constitution, with the power notably to dissolve a party if one of its members was found guilty of a crime.

From May 2008 to December of the same year, the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) waged an unrelenting struggle to force Prime Minister Samak to resign. The Yellow Shirts [8] are in no way the progressive force their name would imply. The movement is led by Sonthi Limtongkul, a press magnate and former business partner of Thaksin, ruined by the 1997 crisis. He linked up with a whole range of disaffected elements: royalists who felt threatened politically and economically by Thaksin’s business clique; military men who did not accept seeing their grip on society reduced since 1992 ; members of the Democrat Party, the traditional ally of the royalty and army and rejected by the business periphery ; judges from the various high courts; intellectuals and members of the middle class tired of corruption and scandals ; monks belonging to reactionary Buddhist sects. All supported the military coup. Among the main leaders were Chamlong Srimuang, Phanlop Phinmanee and Prasong Soonsiri, three of the main veterans of the war against the Communist insurrection of the 1970s and 1980s. All were horrified by the people who they deemed to ignorant to be able to vote and participate in political affairs. They are opposed to democracy and mobilised so that the new constitution would put in place an elitist system under which only 30% of the seats in parliament would be directly elected by a popular vote. They consider Samak’s government, elected democratically by the majority, as illegitimate. On several occasion, the Yellow Shirts received the explicit support of the very reactionary queen Sirikit.

From May 2008, supported by the Democrat Party and Abhisit, the Yellow Shirts remobilised. For several weeks they occupied the office of the prime minister. In September, Samak’s government was dissolved by a judicial decree. Samak, something of a gourmet, was sentenced for having received payment for his participation in televised cookery shows! In response, a new government was formed around Somchai Wongsawat, brother in law of Thaksin. The struggle culminated with the siege of Bangkok’s two airports in late November 2008 [9], stranding thousands of passengers for a week and undermining a Thai economy already disturbed by the world economic crisis. On December 2, 2008, the PPP was dissolved by the constitutional court for electoral fraud. On December 15, following a reversal of alliance organised by the army inside parliament, Abhisit Vejjajiva was elected 27th prime minister by the deputies.

A military coup and two judicial decrees have overthrown three governments whose democratic legitimacy was not in doubt. For most Thais, it appeared increasingly clear that the democratic game was rigged and that the judges were in the service of the rich. To this day, the leaders of the PAD who blockaded the two Bangkok airports have never been brought to court. The countryside elects governments and the élites of Bangkok overthrow them if they do not like them! This reality shows also how spatial and class differentiations pan out in Thailand. The élites and the rich live in Bangkok, the poor originate from the provinces. In Bangkok, peasants are referred to using the very contemptuous term “baan nok” (”outside house”). To live in the countryside is to be backward, uneducated, uncivilised and naïve.

Who are the Red Shirts?

Faced with the situation opened by the putting in place of the Abhisit government, in early 2009 the “United Front for Democracy and against Dictatorship” (UDD), the Red Shirt movement, was set up. This political and social movement was set up originally by the unification of Thaksin’s defenders and the pro-democracy forces that had emerged after the coup. The alliance mobilised a popular base mainly made up of peasants, villagers and urban workers, in particular in the north and north-east of the country, fed up with the double language of the judiciary, the absence of democracy and the maintenance of deep inequalities despite a real modernisation of the country. Although he has partly adopted on his own behalf the political reforms of Thaksin, Abhisit appears as what he is, the representative of the traditional elites. The unity of the movement was achieved around the slogan of resignation of Prime Minister Abhisit and new democratic parliamentary elections.

Thaksin’s wealth has largely contributed to developing the struggle, at least initially. Nonetheless, the Red Shirts movement has changed a lot since its emergence. If Thaksin remains a “hero” for many Red Shirts who feel he has contributed to an improvement in their living conditions, the demands are now on another level. The objectives of Thaksin and the leaders of the UDD are to say the least divergent. The leaders of the Red Shirts claim to be the champions of social justice and democracy. Themes which do not suit Thaksin perfectly. In addition, his chances of returning to power are thin and his main objective could well be to recover the 1.4 billion dollars seized by the judiciary in March. In fact, Thaksin has withdrawn from the movement and as Chang Noi, a well known Thai journalist, says, “Thaksin could well not wish to ride this tiger now he knows how big and ferocious it is” [10].

As to its composition, the UDD has from the beginning been a broad and diverse movement. Unity around the slogan of Abhisit’s resignation and for immediate elections does little to conceal the very different political views and objectives among the leaders. According to Tumberblog [11] a certain number of leaders like Surachai Danwattananusorn “Sae-Dan”, Jaran Dithapichai, Weng Tojirakarn or Vipoothalaeng Pattanaphumthai are former Communists. Others like Jatuporn Promphan are MPs from the Puea Thai party, an heir of the Thai Rak Thai (TRT) and of the People’s Power Party (PPP). Most are royalists or in any case do not publicly challenge the constitutional monarchy. The law forbidding lèse majesté bans any debate on the monarchy. The “crime” can be punished by 3 to 15 years imprisonment. That does not favour freedom of expression and several Red Shirt personalities, like Giles Ji Ungpakorn and Jakaprob Penkair have had to go into exile to avoid prison.

At last, in August 2009, after several months of after discussions, divergences appeared publicly among the leaders of the movement. Jakaprob Penkair and ” Sae-Dan” left it to form their own group, “Red Siam”. The split took place around the tactic advocated by the main leaders of organising a petition to request the royal pardon for Thaksin. A key question: the appeal to the king poses the question of the place of the monarchy and its desirable and possible evolution. The detractors have argued that this petition accords to the king the power to interfere in an undemocratic manner in the struggle of the Red Shirts and would perpetuate illusions about the intentions of the monarchy. For their part, the three leaders of the group “Kwam Jing Wannee” (The Truth Today), Jatuporn Promphan, Weera Musikapong and Nattawut Saikua, fight for minor reforms in the context of the current monarchy. Jatuporn explained very clearly to the newspaper “The Nation” : “We want democracy under the King as head of state, therefore our activities are limited to attacking Privy Council president Prem Tinsulanonda or lower figures to prevent an escalating fight transgressing the constitutional monarchy” [12] The leaders of Red Siam, who are more radical, believe that the monarchy should be reformed. Nonetheless they do not challenge the current framework of the constitutional monarchy. [13]

In terms of the rank and file, the Red Shirts are not the dangerous “terrorists” and conspirators against the monarchy portrayed by the government. They are ordinary people. The product of systematic brainwashing from the cradle, they are mainly of religious, nationalist and royalist sympathies [14]. That is what makes this political movement different from the previous revolts in 1973, 1976 and 1992. For the first time, it is ordinary people from the provinces, the peasants, workers, the poor and also the less well off middle classes of Bangkok who are mobilising. The basis of the movement extends to a part of the middle classes who have become aware of the high cost that the coup has represented, whether in political or economic terms and now support a movement which seeks to re-establish democracy. Many inhabitants of Bangkok have come to show their support for the Red Shirts or to join them.

The UDD has highlighted the specificity of this revolt in updating obsolete terms in the Thai language like “phrai” (serf) and “amart” (nobles). These terms illustrate the oppression and the injustices visited on those who “have nothing” in opposition to the privileged. It certainly amounts to a class struggle, a revolt of the wretched against the established order. The movement has stripped bare the machinery of this profoundly inegalitarian system, at the centre of which lies the monarchy.

End of reign

Is the monarchy still at the centre of the system? The question is legitimate. The political crisis has seriously destabilised the institution. The systematic references to the monarchy by the royalists themselves, first by the army to legitimate the coup then by the Yellow Shirts to legitimate their mobilisations against the “pro Thaksin” governments have helped deconstruct the image of the “palace”, guarantor of national unity and arbiter of partisan conflicts, elaborated over several decades. The doubts have been sown by the Red Shirts and it will henceforth be hard for the establishment to maintain its grip over society by invoking the protection of the monarchy.

The crisis has also revealed that the monarchy is no longer in a position as in the past to weigh on events or smother the protests. The king is dying, and has been in hospital since September 2009. The question of the succession is posed and has opened another political crisis inside the élites. The legitimacy of the monarchy rests to a great extent on the almost God-like image of the current king. Indeed, the designated heir to the throne, prince Vajiralongkorn, is utterly without the “qualities” of his father Bhumibol (”the blessed man”). He is weak politically, known for his decadent morals and detested by the majority of Thais. Salacious stories about his private life circulate on websites before being censored. He is moreover linked to Thaksin who has in the past partly subsidised his lifestyle. The financial stakes are huge. “Forbes” magazine estimated in 2009 that the Thai monarchy was the richest in the world with 30 billion dollars of net assets. Its financial and industrial investments in all sectors of the Thai economy are colossal. The smooth running of business depends, as all understand, on the maintenance of the established order. Given the lack of charisma and legitimacy of Vajiralongkorn, he will not be in a position to have any political authority. Princess Sirindhorn could play such a role as she is much appreciated but the law would only allow it if the heir died. Internal struggles for the succession are intense. Each of the claimants has built alliances with factions of the army and police, which partly explains the indecisions of the government until recent days.

At the other end of the social scale, we are very far from the high life. A recent report from the UNDP [15] on Thailand tells us that inequality has not ceased to grow in recent years. The UNDP compares the share of income of the richest 5% to that of the poorest 5%. The results are revealing: In relatively egalitarian societies like Japan or Scandinavia, the ration is around 3 to 4, i.e. the richest 5% are between three and four times richer than the poorest 5%. In the rest of Europe and in North America it is from 5 to 8. Among Thailand’s neighbours, the ration is around 9 to 11. In Thailand it is in the region of 13 to 15. These inequalities are increasingly rejected by the population.

What outcome to the crisis?

As these lines are written, the military forces have for three days been organising a violent repression of the Red Shirts. According to numerous testimonies from foreign journalists and inhabitants of the capital, the military are firing on the demonstrators with live ammunition. Several civilians have been killed in ambushes by snipers. The confrontations began on May 13 after the head of security at the Rachaprasong camp, Sae Deng, was seriously wounded in the head by a bullet fired by a sniper. The government denies responsibility for this assassination attempt but it seems obvious that only a crack sharpshooter could have such precision and not wound the International Herald Tribune journalist with whom Sae Deng was speaking when he was shot. Already there have been around fifty deaths and it is probable that the real number will never be known because according to the Asian Human Right Commission the army has removed numerous bodies.

The Abhisit government had made an offer to the Red Shirts last week. The national and international press speculated on a possible agreement which would satisfy the two parties. Abhisit proposed a five point “roadmap” centred around elections on November 14. It was hard for the Red Shirt leaders to reject the plan outright. But Abhisit offered no guarantee. He refused to set a date for the dissolution of parliament and to withdraw the accusations of terrorism and conspiracy against the monarchy. In these conditions, while stating that they accepted the plan and wished to negotiate its implementation, the Red Shirts refused to leave the neighbourhood they had occupied for 6 weeks. Even if it is very difficult to obtain information on the subject, it also seems that the UDD had serious internal differences on the position to be adopted towards Abhisit’s proposals. At the beginning of the week, the Red Shirt leaders demanded that the deputy prime minister Suthep Thaugsuban was charged in relation to the confrontations of April 10 which led to around 20 deaths. A request that the government used to justify backtracking on its election proposal and the repression which began on Thursday.

The situation is very complex and changeable and it is difficult to know how it will develop in the coming days and weeks. In the immediate, all scenarios can be envisaged. The repression could temporarily bring a halt to the Red Shirt demonstrations. The army could also meet significant resistance, indeed a development of the provincial mobilisations. In this case, a resignation of the government is probable with elections. But it is also possible that a section of the army could take the situation as the pretext for a new coup. An open struggle between different factions of the army should not be ruled out in that case.

The current impasse in the conflict is sadly not surprising: was Abhisit’s plan to end the crisis sincere? The proposal raises numerous doubts. When Thaksin attempted to renew his electoral mandate in April 2006, after powerful mobilisations against him, Abhisit and the Democrat Party boycotted the elections. Did Abhisit really want elections on November 14? Information disclosed by the press reveals him as among the hardliners in the government who wanted repression rather than negotiations. Inside the government, other ministers also did not want elections they were virtually certain to lose.

The date of the elections, November 14, also posed a problem. The value of an immediate dissolution of parliament, beyond its symbolic value, is that it allows the winning side to be in power on October 1 at the time of the annual reorganisation of the army command. Abhisit’s proposal would allow him to play for time and be in position at this strategic moment.

More fundamentally, in order for the elections to be organised, guarantees are needed so that they should be just and democratic and so that their outcome is respected by all. Indeed, the Yellow Shirts did not conceal the fact that they rejected the proposed elections. The élites are not ready to make concessions. In addition, no democratic development is likely while the monarchy and the army, hand in hand, will accept no opposition to their omnipotence. Thus one can imagine that a new electoral victory for the Red Shirt would have led to Yellow Shirt demonstrations to overthrow the new elected government. For now, the democratic game seems completely blocked

Finally and undoubtedly most significantly: the failure of this attempt to exit the crisis is surely revealing of the fact that the majority of Thais no longer believe that elections alone can put an end to the crisis. A deeper political change is needed. The problem is that decades of repression mean that today there are no political parties based in the workers’ movement capable of being candidates to power and to offer a progressive political solution to the crisis. A number of leaders of the old workers’ parties, whether social democratic or Maoist-inclined Communist, trade unions or peasant associations have been assassinated by the different dictatorial regimes. The workers’ movement has still not recovered. That is why political opposition takes the unexpected form of the Red Shirts: a political movement which is neither a party nor an association, heterogeneous and marked by contradictions but whose essence is its organic link with the people. We should hail the courage of these tens of thousands of workers and peasants who have occupied the commercial and business centres of Bangkok for many weeks and who are now experiencing the assaults of the army. They deserve our support.

Notes:

[1] “Thai Women in the Global Labor Force”. Mary Beth Mills. Rutgers University Press. 2002.

[2] See on ESSF: The coup d’etat: a step backwards for Thailand and Southeast Asia

[3] See “Very Thai? The Myth of a “Thai-Style” Democracy”. Federico Ferrara. And on ESSF: Thai-Style “Democracy,” 1958-2010

[4] See L’Asie du Sud-est prise au piège. Sophie Boisseau du Rocher. Perrin Asie. 2009. p. 118.

[5] “Thailand Human Development Report: Sufficiency Economy and Human Development”. Overview, page xv, UNDP, 2007.

[6] L’Asie du Sud-est prise au piège. Sophie Boisseau du Rocher. Perrin Asie. 2009. p. 118

[7] A euphemism used in Thailand to refer to the king indirectly, for fear of committing the crime of lèse majesté!

[8] In the Buddhist religion every day is associated with a colour. Yellow refers to the day of the king’s birthday, Monday. The PAD chose this colour to stress that the movement was royalist and to imply that the king supported it.

[9] The siege was only possible with the passive support of the security forces.

[10] Chang Noi….

[11] See Split in the Reds: When Differences Become Intolerable

[12] “Split Emerges in Red-Shirt Leadership”. The Nation: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/200…

[13] On this issue, see Giles Ji Ungpakorn, Da Torpedo’s case pushes Thailand back to the Dark Ages and Split in the Reds: When Differences Become Intolerable

[14] See Danielle Sabai, Thailand: The other side of the scenery

[15] Thailand Human Development Report 2009. UNDP. Page 79. http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/nati…

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Danielle Sabai is a South East Asia correspondent for International Viewpoint and Inprecor.

Source: Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal - http://links.org.au/

[Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal seeks to promote the exchange of information, experience of struggle, theoretical analysis and views of political strategy and tactics within the international left. It is a forum for open and constructive dialogue between active socialists from different political traditions. It seeks to bring together those in the international left who are opposed to neoliberal economic and social policies, and reject the bureaucratic model of ``socialism'' that arose in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and China.

Inspired by the unfolding socialist revolution in Venezuela, Links is a journal for ``Socialism of the 21st Century'' and the discussions and debates flowing from that powerful example of socialist renewal.]

Persecution of Palestinian citizens recalls S. Africaapartheid repression

Adri Nieuwhof and Bangani Ngeleza *

Two weeks after Israel imposed a travel ban on him, Ameer Makhoul, a well-respected Palestinian leader holding Israeli citizenship, was kidnapped from his home on 6 May in the middle of the night. The persecution of Makhoul brings back memories of the South Africa apartheid regime: he has been held incommunicado and was not allowed access to his lawyer for two weeks; a court order prohibited publication of any information on the case against Makhoul for 90 days; and the so-called evidence justifying the “security charges” against Makhoul remains secret. During the South Africa anti-apartheid movement, similar tactics were used against those advocating for freedom and equal rights, who were accused of terrorism and having links with the Soviet Union.

The detention of Ameer Makhoul follows a wave of repression of Palestinian leaders and activists resisting the occupation in the West Bank, and he is not the only Palestinian community leader in Israel to be receiving such treatment. Internationally-renowned pharmacologist Dr. Omar Said was detained two weeks before Makhoul and a gag order was used to silence the media. Detentions and gag orders are imposed by Israel to intimidate and harass those who speak out and campaign for freedom and equal rights.

The secrecy around the detention of Makhoul and Said is disturbing, because there is no way to determine if their rights are being respected, and human rights organizations have documented Israel’s systematic abuse of Palestinian political prisoners’ rights. Makhoul wasn’t even present for the closed-door hearing at the Petach Tikva court during which his detention was extended. Meanwhile, Said has been subjected to continuous interrogation and allowed a very limited amount of sleep since his arrest on 24 April. Makhoul’s attorneys suspect that Makhoul was subject to torture during the 12 days he was prevented from meeting with his legal defense team, and the lawyers’ request for the court to release Makhoul’s medical records was refused.

The gag order prevents the Israeli press from exposing the secret “evidence” behind Israel’s espionage allegations against Makhoul and Said. Similar accusations drove former Knesset member and community leader Azmi Bishara into self-imposed exile to avoid ending up in prison. Hussein Abu Hussein, a lawyer who has defended several Palestinians in Israel against charges of spying, told the Israeli daily Haaretz that espionage laws in Israel were so wide-ranging that an Internet chat or telephone conversation with anyone in an “enemy state” could lead to prosecution. However, Israel’s strategy of branding the Palestinian struggle for freedom and equal rights as “terrorist” is not new and the similarities between Israel’s behavior and apartheid South Africa’s oppression of anti-apartheid activists are striking.

South Africa’s Terrorism Act No. 83 of 1967 allowed for the indefinite detention of an individual for terrorism, which was very broadly defined to include anyone they suspected of being engaged or involved in any act against the state. Persons could be held indefinitely since the act allowed detention until all questions were satisfactorily answered or until no further useful purpose would be achieved by keeping the person in detention. The act gave the state the authority to interrogate and to extract information while the public and the families of detainees were not entitled to any information including even the identity or whereabouts of persons detained. Detainees could literally and effectively disappear.

This legislation effectively gave the state license to take away activists’ human rights and avoid accountability. Many were kidnapped and imprisoned under this legislation; this law was invoked in the kidnapping and sentencing of Eric Ngeleza and some of his comrades in 1977 for their membership with the banned African National Congress (ANC) and for facilitating the safe passage of freedom fighters into ANC camps outside South Africa. They were branded as terrorists, interrogated and sentenced to long prison terms on Robben Island. In Ngeleza’s case, it would be ten years before he was reunited with his family. This fate should not be allowed to befall Makhoul, Said and many other activists whose only “crime” is demanding equal rights in the land of their birth.

The new Israeli military order - order 1650, for the “Prevention of Infiltration” - also parallels apartheid South Africa’s racist pass laws. The military order defines anyone who enters the West Bank illegally as an infiltrator, as well as a person who is present in the area and does not lawfully hold a permit. The current South African government protested the order as “a gross violation of an individual’s human rights,” comparing it the notoriously oppressive policy of the apartheid era.

Israel’s treatment of Makhoul and Said, so similar to the application of the Terrorism Act in South Africa and other oppressive measures, confirm that Israel is an apartheid state that has no regard for the rights of its own citizens. It is long overdue for Israel, like apartheid South Africa in its time, to be declared a pariah state and isolated until it agrees to respect human rights.
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* Adri Nieuwhof and Bangani Ngeleza are independent consultants from Switzerland and South Africa, respectively. Nieuwhof supported the South African anti-apartheid struggle as a member of the Holland Committee on Southern Africa. Ngeleza participated in the liberation struggle as an activist with the African National Congress. When he was 11, his father Eric Ngeleza was sentenced to ten years on Robben Island.

Source: The Electronic Intifada, 19 May 2010

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11270.shtml ]]> http://kanaanonline.org/ebulletin-en/?feed=rss2&p=304 http://kanaanonline.org/ebulletin-en/?p=302 http://kanaanonline.org/ebulletin-en/?p=302#comments Fri, 14 May 2010 12:20:11 +0000 masad http://kanaanonline.org/ebulletin-en/?p=302

By Adel Samara

The last elections in Iraq have been followed by a new face and phase of crisis inside the local camp of occupation collaborators, agents, mafia, sectarian separatists…etc, while the popular classes stood neutral or were exploited despite of the flood of rhetoric that masses vote on a national not sectarian basis. After the results of elections, none of the large lists was able or was allowed to build a cabinet. The corrupt comprador, parasitic and collaborationist mafia are competing with each other over the whole country. Until now, foreign powers, US and Iran, continue to mobilize and direct their agents in the open or directly. It is obvious that there is an indirect conflict between the two foreign powers that are in a position to “milking” their local agents but ultimately they are “milking” Iraq.

Arab regimes are paralyzed either individually or collectively through the Arab League because there is no Arab system that is able to help another Arab country when it falls into crisis or because one of the aspects of US massacre against Iraq is to destroy and to de-Arabize Iraq and to de-Arabize all Arab countries. The US aggression supported by the West in general is the last crime of western modernity against Arab Homeland. That is why the role of the Arab league in Iraqi elections wasn’t different than any NGOs’ group.

The political scene in Arab Homeland demonstrates that the US and other imperialist regimes are the real rulers in this region. US/EU leaders spend more time and involvement in our region than in their own countries, especially when resistance spirit and activity rise.

Palestine’s Bitter Lesson Repeated in Iraq

The Zionist Ashkenazi Regime - Israel (ZAR) had paid back some of what US/EU was accustomed to “donate” to its sustenance and survival since it is a mere creation the imperialist West. It paid back at two main levels in their crimes in Iraq:

· The ZAR criminal military experience against Palestinian resistance,

· And the experience of “democracy” under occupation, the “colonized” democracy.

Following the signing of Oslo Accords between ZAR and PLO, two rounds of elections took place in Oslo-stan under the settler colonial regime sponsored and financed by the US/EU imperialisms. What a democracy under occupation on the one hand, and supported and financed by imperialism on the other! This form of morally bankrupt democracy would have never happened if the resistance spirit were still high. It was a political game to deviate the struggle against occupation, from military and political struggle against normalization with the occupier, to concentrate on monopolizing power for the upper elite of both, political currents the semi-secular, and those of Political Islam. The result of this deformity was an internal Palestinian violent conflict motivated by another aspect of dispute over its military struggle on the one hand, and the recognition of the ZAR on the other. It was finally crystallized in the split of Gaza from the West Bank.

The same experience was copied and repeated in Iraq. It is copied in an Arab country where the occupation deliberately encourages and supports all national, ethnical, sectarian and political currents to compete among each other and to struggle against each other. All this was designed under the pretence of democratizing Iraq, a democratizing that led to 1.2 million deaths, 4 million refugees who fled the country, overwhelming and generalized poverty and placing most of the work force within the militia for the sects and nationalistic bourgeois.

That form of “democracy” was built on three false pillars:

· “Free” elections under military criminal occupation

· Local client regime serving the occupier

· A bitter sectarian conflict.

In the early days of the US occupation of Iraq in 2003, the US military governor dissolved Iraqi army as a symbol of unity and national defense and issued a military order named de-baathization or “uprooting of Baa’th party”.

Neither the UN nor any official regime in the world showed any signs of protest, a case that looked more like an international conspiracy or subjugation for US hegemony over world politics. This case of compromise was a premise for democracy under military colonial occupation. As noted above, this experience repeated and copied the ZAR experience in the occupied WBG.

In the second elections 2010, the same military orders against Ba’ath party were emphasized and all candidates who were suspected to be close to the Ba’ath party were deprived the right of nomination themselves. Candidates were limited to those who are collaborators, corrupt, mafia…etc.

The result of the elections brought to the Iraqi parliament representatives from several sects but of one kind only. In fact the results of the elections came according to what was planned. The main four blocks are collaborators: Maliki, Allawi, Sadrists and Kurds.

All these candidates come from the same political line, with no patriotic orientation, and all are collaborators and from the same class, the comprador parasitic class, despite their sectarian loyalty. Meanwhile, Iraq had fallen into a political crisis, crisis of competition among the leaders of the same class while the popular masses continue to be the victim of this class conflict and bear the burden of sectarian bloody fight. This form of internal social conflict is the mirror of the bloodshed which was designed by the US occupation and will persist for some time to come.

It should be noted that the partners in this conflict in Iraq are different than class conflicts under ordinary conditions in other countries. It is even different from the law of partnership between center/periphery bourgeoisies, that of “trickle-down economy”. In Iraq the local sectarian bourgeois are not patriotic they are traitors … betrayers for the national cause. It is very difficult to say that they are a coalition of “Social Structure of Accumulation”. They are not a productive nationalist bourgeois. The rental and trickle-down role for many dependent bourgeoisies in various Third World countries enjoy some form of sovereignty, in Iraq this is lacking. This non-patriotic bourgeois is a tail to several masters: US military governorate and embassy, the Iranian regime, and theological clergy.

That is why they failed to form a joint government because each of the main lists believes in negating all others and impose its sectarian dependent dictatorship. However, the sponsors of the elections continued to claim that the elections were democratic…etc. It should be noted that the same imperialist regimes which impose the sanctions and siege against Iraq, occupied and destroyed it are those that sponsored the Iraqi elections, i.e. democracy under military occupation and colonialism. What an irony!

After the conclusion of the elections, each of the main lists went back to its point of reference: especially to the US and Iran. Allawi, who is now the US “favorite”, tried to use Arab League but in vain since there is no joint, free and effective Arab role in Iraq. While the US still has the upper hand in Iraq, through its military might, Iran has the political/sectarian one. Two forms of foreign power are still the most decisive factors in Iraq today. But in the Iraqi political scene, the picture is the opposite so long as the majority of the collaborationist forces supports Iran and receives the backing by its rulers. Those who are loyal to the US occupation pretend that sooner or later the occupation will end, but the Iranian danger is persistent on the borders and even in the semi-occupation of the south. This is, however, the choice of collaborationists but not that of the resistance.

What is taking place in Iraq now is a competition between the foreign enemies using local agents, i.e. both Maliki (as a traditional political Islamic current) and Allawi (as a renegade Bathist and the first puppet used by the US occupation of Iraq), both currents are offering concessions to Tehran which, in turn, declares its willingness to welcome any of the Iraqi leaders. The dependent Kurdish forces are in the position of waiting and see. They are exploiting all these passive developments to gain more pointes, although gradually, to strengthen their final goal of separation through the partition of Iraq and the termination of its Arab depth.

It is important to note here that the Arab League deliberately support the occupation of Iraq from the point view that all resistance forces in the Arab Homeland (in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Somalia…etc) represent a danger to the Arab Qutriyeh^[1] state, a position that supports deliberately or by its outcome the US dangerous and liquidationist aggressive project of the so-called Large Middle East Project (LMEP), which a foreign and endemic project designed deliberately to be imposed over another country/s.

Both, the enmity of Arab regimes against the resistance on the one and, and the LMEP on the other, have the same goal of recognizing the ZAR and its integration into the Arab Homeland, by means of domination and control.

Resistance is both, the Target and the Goal

Resistance is the target of enemy’s camp, and the goal of the popular masses. That is why; the battle is at the doors of the resistance. All the competing foreign forces and their local agents might reconcile with each other against the resistance movements, or at least decide to divide the region among them.

As this is the case, we are talking about a complexity of class interests of the foreign and the local bourgeois and any demagogic discourse about people’s free choice, enjoying democracy , development, and independence are mere lies.

Only the resistance movement represents the people’s aspiration for liberation through its fight in the field. It is not an easy battle since the enemies are too powerful. But it is well known that the Iraqi resistance succeeded to make the US occupation forces fatigued to a great extent and it was the main cause behind the US financial/economic crisis. The continuity of the resistance in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine is the only response to the colonial capitalism in its global era.

A Bribed or a Racist Civil Society!

In spite of our critique of the anti-war movement against war and globalization in the West, we were pleased and encouraged as we witnessed the emergence of that movement on the eve and throughout the criminal white capitalist wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia…etc. But with the passage of time and as these wars progressed, they became the norm and the crimes of the white armies in occupied countries became an accepted reality, whether by means of neutral manner or carelessness. The human motivation against the war declined almost to zero. What is astonishing is that the masses did not protest again against the war as the main factor behind the current financial/economic crisis.

The question is: what might mobilize the masses, the civilized/civil society in the West against their aggressive bourgeois if humanity, war and economic crisis failed to generate any serious protest? Those calamities were the main caused and pillars of war and revolution in the recent human history.

Some might argue that to accept this interpretation you need a revolutionary climate not an era of the triumph of the counter revolution. Others might argue that because most of the social classes in the West including the working classes remain “bribed” by capitalism and even their consciousness has been deteriorated in spite the crisis. If this is right, but also the Lumpen-proletriat of Marcuse failed to be carry the revolution which he dreamt of, but even more, many of them are soldiers in Iraq committing the crimes of war.

I like to venture by noting that this social/human/class compromise from the side of white popular classes in the West is due to:

· A white racist cultural education and deformed consciousness:

· And an opportunistic attitude based on the belief that:

o First, there is no near horizon for a change or defeat of capitalism;

o Second, as long as those in the countries of the periphery bear their miserable situation, they deserve it;

o Third if we in the west protest now, the precious privileges that we are enjoying might evaporate in this the delicate world economic situation.

If this analysis is correct, it will support the long known analysis that the revolution will start, but will not be limited, to the countries of the periphery because capital insists to exploit human beings to an extent where they can’t bear and the revolution will erupt as a result.

While the analysis or strategy which is based on de-linking and development by popular protection is correct and necessary for the start of revolution in the periphery, revolution in periphery and center will necessitate:

· A communist party of that must be build/developed by popular masses, to be under a continuous supervision by popular committees, and not imposed by a leadership of intellectual elite;

· This party must be able to carry on the duty of re-educating the popular masses which have been the victim of the heavy burden of de-education and de-humanization by bourgeois media. The bourgeois de-education of popular classes made it imperative for revolutionaries to interfere and to not to allow class consciousness to develop politically in a spontaneous manner.

Joseph Massad

(Kana’an eBulletin - Volume X - Issue 2247)

“Colonialism is peace; anti-colonialism is war.” This is the unalterable equation that successive Israeli governments insist must determine the basis of all current and future relations between Israeli Jews and the Palestinians. Indeed, the deployment of the rhetoric of peace between Palestinians and Israeli Jews since the 1970s has been contingent on whether the Palestinians would acquiesce in this formula or insist on resisting it. The Oslo Accords were in large measure a ratification of this formula by the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Nonetheless, Palestinian resistance, violent and non- violent, to understanding “colonialism as peace” never fully subsided, even as the Palestinian Authority insisted that it become the law of the land.

The deployment of the rhetoric of peace however was more than anything else a deployment of the rhetoric of the “peace process.” In his book about the peace process, William Quandt traces the history of this deployment:

“Sometime in the mid-1970s the term peace process began to be widely used to describe the American-led efforts to bring about a negotiated peace between Israel and its neighbors. The phrase stuck, and ever since it has been synonymous with the gradual, step-by-step approach to resolving one of the world’s most difficult conflicts. In the years since 1967 the emphasis in Washington has shifted from the spelling out of the ingredients of ‘peace’ to the ‘process’ of getting there… The United States has provided both a sense of direction and a mechanism. That, at its best, is what the peace process has been about. At worst, it has been little more than a slogan used to mask the marking of time.”

I disagree partly with Quandt’s conclusion, mostly because the “peace process” since 1993 has been a mask for nothing short of Israeli colonial settlement and attempts by the Palestinian people to resist it and by the Palestinian Authority to coexist with it.

As has become clear even to the staunchest believers in the peace rhetoric, the Oslo Accords have not only been the main mechanism by which Israel subcontracted its occupation of the Palestinian people to the Palestinian Authority but also the main instrument through which Israel maintained its colonial control of Palestinian lands. While the occupied territories had been subjected to a different set of military laws since 1967 that governed the Palestinians and their land, the Oslo Accords began to institute the principle of separation, or in South African lingo, Apartheid. It was Yitzhak Rabin, Israel’s former prime minister and the ethnic cleanser of the Palestinian population from the cities of Lydda and Ramleh in 1948, who would express Israel’s separation principle on 23 January 1995: “This path must lead to a separation, though not according to the borders prior to 1967. We want to reach a separation between us and them.” The separation or Apartheid principle will ultimately translate into Israel’s construction of the Apartheid Wall, which has already swallowed up more than 10 per cent of West Bank lands and will swallow more once it is completed. Let me remind you here that the South African Apartheid regime itself was not terribly comfortable with the term Apartheid, which means separateness in Afrikaans, and began to replace it since the 1970s with the term “separate development”.

But this Israeli separation and colonial appropriation of land was again articulated through the rhetoric of peace. Since the signing of the Oslo Accords, Israel has more than tripled its colonial settler population in the West Bank and more than doubled it across the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem. Israel continues to confiscate Palestinian lands for colonial purposes and suppresses all Palestinian resistance to its colonial efforts. In 1993, there were approximately 281,000 colonial settlers in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem (124,200 in the West Bank, 4,800 in Gaza, and 152,800 in Jerusalem). At the end of 2009, there were approximately 490,000 colonial settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. As of September 2009, there were 301,200 colonial settlers in the West Bank and 190,000 in East Jerusalem. Israeli leaders have maintained that their colonial settlement did not detract from Israel’s commitment to peace. On the contrary, Israel is clear that it was the Palestinian Authority who is to blame for the cessation of negotiations. Current Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is not only committed to “colonialism as peace”, he, like his predecessors, insists that the Palestinian Authority protests that Israeli colonial settlement must stop for negotiations to begin is nothing short of an imposition of “pre-conditions” for negotiations, which he cannot accept.

This Israeli position is hardly new. Israeli leaders have always insisted that Israeli colonialism is not only compatible with peace, but that the Palestinian leadership’s acquiescence in it will ensure peace, while it was Palestinian resistance to it that causes war and terrorism.

One of the most pressing arguments often made by Israeli leaders since 1948 is how they have always been committed to peace with the Palestinian people and their Arab neighbours only to be rebuffed time and again by them. Israeli leaders from David Ben-Gurion to Netanyahu have insisted that all the wars Israel fought were not of Israel’s choosing but imposed on it by Palestinian and Arab rejection of Israel’s right to colonise. While Israel is ready to fight all wars, they insist, its preference has always been for peace. Golda Meir had declared in 1969: “We have always said that in our war with the Arabs we had a secret weapon — no alternative.” This is not just a question of political propaganda, but also a reflection of Israel’s sincere commitment to “colonialism as peace.”

Political wisdom in Israel has it that Israeli Jews have prayed and worked for peace for the last 62 years only for their peaceful offers to be turned down by their Arab enemies. What Israelis mean by this is that they have prayed that they could continue to colonise Palestinian lands and also have peace at the same time, but instead they have had to deal with war, terrorism, and resistance to their “peaceful” colonial efforts. It is true that finally one Arab, Anwar El-Sadat, met Israel’s extended hand with a peace agreement in 1979, but he was unique in his efforts. It took King Hussein 15 years to follow suit under international pressure. Still even these peaceful agreements have not resulted in normalisation of relations with Arab states or of popular acceptance of Israel by the Arab peoples. The Palestinians while pretending to offer peace to Israel have been proven to be deceptive and not serious about peace at all, as they insist on resisting its colonial efforts. What is Israel to do in this belligerent and “tough” neighbourhood in which it lives? How can it deal with such bellicose people intent on destroying it when all it asks for is peace and security for its colonial settlement?

Just a few weeks ago President Shimon Peres insisted: “I want to say in the name of the state of Israel at large: We do not seek war… We are a nation that yearns for peace, but knows, and will always know, how to defend itself.” Even the much maligned Netanyahu also declared a few weeks ago: “We are a peace seeking nation who prays for peace… our one hand is extended in offering peace to our willing neighbours, while the other wields a sword to protect ourselves against those who seek to destroy us.”

In order to understand Israel’s commitment to peace, we need to understand what it means by that term and its commensurate companion, the term “security”. These are key concepts in the language of Zionism. Many of Israel’s detractors believe Israel is lying when it insists on peace and security. I will argue that these detractors are wrong. Israel is dead serious about its commitment to peace and is honest when it insists that war is something imposed on it by its enemies. The problem is one of translation. Israel’s enemies do not seem to understand the language of Zionism — and by that I do not mean the Hebrew language! I will translate from Zionism to English one more time: Colonialism is Peace, Anti-Colonialism is War.

I will give you some historical background. On 14 May 1948, Israel’s first prime minister Ben-Gurion stated Israel’s peaceful intentions in the nascent state’s foundational document, The Declaration of Independence. Ben-Gurion announced:

“We appeal — in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months — to the Arab inhabitants of the state of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the state on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions…We extend our hand to all neighbouring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighbourliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The state of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East. “

These noble sentiments were uttered while the Israeli army was proceeding with its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and the colonisation of their lands. Indeed by 14 May 1948, Israel’s army had already expelled 400,000 Palestinians from their lands and homes. Ben-Gurion was clearly calling on the remaining Palestinians who had not yet been expelled to “preserve the peace” before the army moves to expel them. But the expulsion of the Palestinians was necessary for Jewish colonisation of the country, which could only proceed peacefully once they were expelled.

It is true that the Zionist movement was predicated on the colonisation of Palestine primarily by European Jews since the 1890s. But many Zionists came to regret that the organisations they set up in the late 19th and early 20th century for the colonial effort were named in ways that are embarrassing today: “The Palestine Jewish Colonisation Association”, “The Jewish Colonial Trust”, “The Jewish Colonial Bank”, or “The Colonisation Department” of the Jewish Agency, among others. In the 1930s they tried to correct some of this as they worried it could be offensive to Palestinians. Indeed, F.H. Kisch, the director of the Jewish Agency’s Political Department and the Chairman of the Jewish Agency’s Executive in Palestine, proposed a change in Zionism’s colonial language. He wrote in his diary in 1931 that he was “striving to eliminate the word ‘colonisation’ in… connection [to Jewish colonial settlement in Palestine] from our phraseology. The word is not appropriate from our point of view since one does not set up colonies in a homeland but abroad: e.g. German colonies on the Volga or Jewish colonies in the Argentine, while from the point of view of Arab opinion the verb to ‘colonise’ is associated with imperialism and aggressiveness.” Unfortunately for future Israeli strategists, the word would persist in Zionist language, even while Israeli propagandists were insisting that the Zionist movement was an anti-colonial movement not unlike anti-colonial movements in India and Ghana.

But not only would the “C” word persist, so would colonisation of the lands of the Palestinians. After 1948, however, Israel would replace the term to “colonise” with the term to “Judaise”, as in its scheme to “Judaise the Galilee” in the 1970s. This notwithstanding, Israel continued to make its case to the world, and to explain its acts through Hasbara, which, as many of you know, means “explanation”. Unlike other countries that resort to political propaganda, Israel only offers explanations, Hasbara. For example, Israeli leaders “explained” after 1948 that Israel’s colonial actions were peaceful acts. The only reason why there were wars is because Palestinians and other Arabs opposed and resisted these peaceful colonial acts. To cite Golda Meir again, what alternative did Israel have but to fight back those intent on stopping its colonial efforts?

But why would Israel’s enemies insist that Zionist and Israeli colonialism, or Judaisation, was not compatible with peace; indeed that it was not equivalent to peace? It is true that Israel expelled three quarter of a million Palestinians by the end of the war it launched against them, but that was in order to establish a peaceful Jewish state. It has refused to repatriate the Palestinian refugees in violation of international law in order to preserve the peace, and it has confiscated their property and the property of those Palestinians who remained in Israel, also in violation of international law, for the sake of establishing peace. It only went to war when it was forced to. On 15 May 1948, five Arab armies intervened to stop its five-month long war on and expulsion of the Palestinian people, but this only proves that the Arabs were the ones who started the war! When it invaded Egypt, Jordan and Syria in 1967, Israel did so in order to bring about peace. Sure, it began to implant colonial settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, the Sinai, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights, and yes it annexed East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, but all of this was done peacefully. Even when it invaded Lebanon in 1982, Israel called its savage invasion “Peace for Galilee”. Israel’s language of peace could not have been stressed more strongly.

Another important Zionist term is “security”, which is of course linked to peace. By “security” Zionism and Israel have always meant security for Israel’s colonial settler project and for its colonial settlements. This could also mean insecurity for the Palestinians at whose expense the colonial settlement proceeds. This, however, is immaterial, as the insecurity to Palestinians is incidental to the meaning of security in the language of Zionism. I believe Ariel Sharon put it best when he declared in 2000 Israel’s commitment to peace and security: “I am for lasting peace,” he said: “United, I believe, we can win the battle for peace. But it must be a different peace, one with full recognition of the rights of the Jews in their one and only land: peace with security for generations and peace with a united Jerusalem as the eternal, undivided capital of the Jewish people in the state of Israel forever.” What this means is that security is actually a synonym for peace and colonialism, just as the opposite of colonialism means anti-colonialism, and the absence of security means anti-colonialism, and therefore war. Let me translate for you one more time: Colonialism is peace is security; anti-colonialism is war is terrorism.

Let me now move to the important formula on which the “peace process” has been based, namely “land for peace”. I will suggest to you that the reason why the “peace process” has not been successful is not because of continuing Israeli colonialism, but rather as a result of the perennial problem of translation. What “land for peace” means in the language of Zionism is that Israel will pledge not to colonise some small parts of the West Bank and Gaza, which Israel, with God and America on its side, consider as the rightful lands of the Jews, in exchange for a cessation of Palestinian anti-colonial resistance as war. It is in effect a major Israeli concession and an attempt by Israel to understand the Palestinian language of anti-colonialism.

While Israel is baffled that colonialism does not seem to mean peace for the Palestinians as it does for Zionism and other colonial languages, it is willing, in the name of cultural relativism, to concede to the Palestinians that it will not colonise some of what they mistakenly believe are their lands, if the Palestinians would only stop their anti-colonialism as war. The problem is that Palestinians also failed to understand what “land for peace” means. For Palestinians, “land for peace” means that Palestinians will be giving up 78 per cent of their own lands to Israeli colonialism in exchange for a cessation of Israeli colonial wars against them and a cessation of Israeli colonial settlement on the remaining 22 per cent of Palestine, including all of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians (and international law with them) believe is their land. This has infuriated the Israelis who insisted that their interpretation of “land for peace” must be the basis for negotiations and not this strange and esoteric, even “anti-Semitic” Palestinian mistranslation which rejects God’s mandate and promises to the Jewish people as interpreted by Zionism. Israel has since provided the Palestinian Authority with a Zionist dictionary to avoid future misunderstandings, but to no avail.

The problem of translation was most apparent in the failure of the Camp David talks in the summer of 2000, which resulted in Yasser Arafat’s rejection of Ehud Barak’s offer. In the language of Zionism, Barak offered Arafat 73 per cent of the West Bank, which could expand in 10 to 25 years to 91 per cent (although some American and Israeli accounts insist that Barak offered 95 per cent of the West Bank). The problem was again one of translation. The West Bank means something different in the language of Zionism from what it means to the Palestinians and international law. The West Bank was the name the Jordanian authorities gave to the Central and Eastern parts of Palestine that they annexed in 1950. This included the small city of East Jerusalem, which was six square kilometres in size when the Israelis occupied it in 1967. In the language of Zionism, the West Bank not only excludes the small city of East Jerusalem but, in fact, also excludes the much-expanded city which the Israelis annexed in 1967 and ratified their annexation in 1980 by expanding its size to 70 square kilometres at the expense of West Bank lands, i.e. they expanded it to almost 12 times its original size. United Jerusalem would be renamed in the 1980s by the Israelis “Greater Jerusalem”, and it would be expanded to almost 300 square kilometres by stealing more land from the West Bank. Indeed Greater Jerusalem has come to encompass almost 10 per cent of the West Bank, not to speak of the more recent plan of Metropolitan Jerusalem, whose geographic size is being expanded by the Israelis to encompass possibly as much as 25 per cent of West Bank lands. Moreover, according to Barak’s offer at Camp David, the West Bank would be bifurcated by a road from Greater Jerusalem to the Dead Sea, which Israel would close to non-Jews in accordance with its security considerations. This means that 73 per cent of the West Bank means 73 per cent of 75-90 per cent of the West Bank, i.e. 55-65 per cent of what the Palestinians and international law understand by the term West Bank. The Israelis were appalled at Arafat’s stinginess. Here was Israel pleading with Arafat that it would continue to colonise anywhere from 35-45 per cent of the West Bank but it would commit no longer to colonise 55- 65 per cent of the West Bank, which in the language of Zionism equals 91-95 per cent of the West Bank, and Arafat still rejected this generous offer. This was clearly a language problem. Let me recap for you: Colonialism is peace is security; anti-colonialism is war is terrorism; Half the West Bank is the West Bank.

Another problem of translation has to do with the term sovereignty. In the language of Zionism a sovereign Palestinian state on half the West Bank and all of Gaza means according to Ehud Barak’s offer the following: The Israelis have the right to establish early warning stations inside the Palestinian state to be; they will have full and exclusive control of Palestinian airspace; Israel also will have the right to deploy troops in the Palestinian state in the event of an emergency, and an international force including Israel must be stationed in the Jordan Valley. Finally, the Palestinian state must be demilitarised. Aside from this, the Palestinian state would be “sovereign”. This arrangement is not that dissimilar from the Bantustans of Apartheid South Africa. The Palestinian Authority has been submitting to intensive language and translation courses by the Israelis and the Americans in the past 10 years to bring its strange notion of sovereignty (shared by international law) to the more familiar Israeli meaning of it. These lessons have recently borne fruit. Let me translate for you one more time: Colonialism is peace is security; Anti-Colonialism is war is terrorism; Half the West Bank is the West Bank; A Bantustan is A Sovereign Independent State.

The best Palestinian student of the language of Zionism has been Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. Fayyad understands Israel’s language so well that he is preparing to build the institutions of this “sovereign” Palestinian “state” by August 2011 on 40 per cent of the West Bank where the PA has partial authority. It is true that since Barak’s offer, the Apartheid Wall has taken another 10 per cent of the West Bank, but that does not matter. President Barack Obama is now considering a new “peace plan” whose map, according to the Washington Post, is essentially 90 per cent of the map offered by Ehud Barak to Arafat in 2000. I presume the 90 per cent here is an acknowledgement that the 10 per cent of the West Bank swallowed up by the Apartheid Wall is no longer on offer. New supplementary editions of the Zionist dictionary are just out with new definitions of the entry “West Bank.” If Ehud Barak offered 55-65 per cent of the West Bank, then 90 per cent of that is 49-58 per cent of the West Bank. If Obama’s attempts are successful in bringing the Netanyahu government down soon and Ehud Barak (who was visiting the Pentagon and the White House last week) becomes the new prime minister of Israel and makes a new offer to Fayyad, then this is what Fayyad will be signing on to. This of course will be the pragmatic thing to do, which brings us to another important set of Zionist vocabulary that merits translation, namely, the terms “pragmatism” and “extremism”.

These two terms are important because in large measure they require not only the comprehension of the meaning of Zionist terms but also the ability to adopt them and to speak the Zionist language fluently. “Pragmatism” in the language of Zionism essentially means accepting the meanings assigned to words in the language of Zionism, i.e. a pragmatist is someone who accepts that “colonialism is peace is security” and that “anti-colonialism is war and terrorism”. Moreover a pragmatist, which Israeli and American officials agree Fayyad is one, must agree that Bantustan means sovereignty and that half the West Bank means the entire West Bank.

Here, it is important to remember that Arafat had only partially learned the language of Zionism when he agreed to identify Palestinian armed resistance to Israeli colonialism as “terrorism”, which he pledged to renounce in 1988. Nonetheless, Arafat still suffered from language limitations that prevented him from understanding that “half the West Bank means the entire West Bank” and that “Bantustan means sovereignty.” It is true that Ehud Barak tried to introduce Arafat to another Zionist term, namely that Jerusalemmeans the Palestinian village of Abu Dis and that Arafat could have his capital in Abu Dis as Jerusalem, but Arafat remained clearly illiterate when it came to that new terminology.

On the other hand, there is the term “extremism”, which in the language of Zionism refers to all positions that refuse the meanings accorded to terms in the language of Zionism. Any Palestinian who insists that the West Bank means all the West Bank including East Jerusalem and does not refer to half the West Bank excluding East Jerusalem must be an extremist. Moreover, any Palestinian who insists that sovereignty means an independent state which controls its borders and airspace and cannot accept the deployment of foreign troops on its sovereign territory except by invitation must also be an extremist, as would anyone who believes that colonialism does not mean peace and security and that anti-colonialism does not mean war and terrorism. I realise that it is time to translate for you what we have learned so far: Colonialism is peace is security; anti-colonialism is war is terrorism; Half the West Bank is the West Bank; A Bantustan is a sovereign independent state; and a pragmatist is someone who accepts all the above while an extremist is someone who rejects it.

Last but not least is the question of Palestinian recognition of Israel. During the 1970s, Israel introduced a novel notion unknown in international relations, namely “Israel’s right to exist”, which it insists the Palestinian leadership and the Arab states must recognise as a precursor to any kind of peace. “Israel’s right to exist” of course means “Israel’s right to colonise Palestine,” which would therefore legitimise the catastrophe it had visited on the Palestinian people in 1948 and continues to visit on them since then. Much resistance ensued until the PLO acquiesced partly to this formulation in 1993 and recognised Israel’s “right to exist in peace and security”. Israel realised that the United States, which forced this formulation on the PLO, misunderstood what Israel meant by its “right to exist”. In the last decade Israel explained (again, Hasbara here is the operative term) to the Americans that what the Palestinian Authority must recognise is Israel’s “right to exist as a Jewish state”, meaning a state that has the right to colonise Palestine solely by Jews and one that has the right to have discriminatory laws between Jewish and non-Jewish citizens and one that grants Jews differential rights — in short, Israel’s right to be racist state. This is essential for “colonialism as peace”, the Israelis insisted. The Americans obliged. Presidents Bush Jr and Barack Obama have been insisting to the Palestinian Authority for some time now that peace means recognising Israel’s right to exist as a “Jewish state”. Fayyad recently agreed and told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that Israel was a “biblical” country and that Jewish settlers can colonise its empty lands but should stop colonising half the West Bank on which he wants to establish a Palestinian state: “Related to the Zionist ethos, fine, Israel is a biblical country, there are lots of hilltops, lots of vacant space, why don’t [the Jewish colonial settlers] use that, and let us get on with it?” Here Fayyad is recognising “colonialism as peace” on 78 per cent of Palestine that became Israel and in East Jerusalem and on 50 per cent of the West Bank but no more! He also understands that recognising Israel’s right to be a racist state means peace.

Now that I have provided an abridged lexicon of Zionist terminology, I hope it has become clear to everyone that the reason for the ongoing “violence” in Israel and Palestine is not on account of Israeli colonialism at all but rather a direct result of mistranslation. It is essentially a language problem. If some conflict resolution experts could be given the chance to explain to Palestinian leaders that Israel refuses to deal with “extremists” and that it is willing to deal with “pragmatists” and that pragmatism for Israel means accepting the language of Zionism, then this whole sordid affair misnamed the “Palestinian/Israeli conflict” will be over in a jiffy and we can all go home. Sadly, these experts have tried and have been going at it since the 1980s but they cannot seem to break the language barrier completely though they produced some remarkable successes. President Obama is hoping to build on these successes to advance his new “peace plan”. This time he seems to have a Palestinian partner in Fayyad who is fluent in the language of Zionism. The problem, however, is that, in contrast with the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian people have never been illiterate in the language of Zionism, but rather too fluent in it to the point of understanding very well how Zionist words translate on the ground.

After 62 years of persistent Israeli colonialism of Palestine, unless President Obama and Israeli leaders understand that colonialism is war and anti-colonialism is peace and that the only viable state project in the area would be one that encompasses all Palestinians and Israeli Jews as equal citizens in it, whatever “peace plan” they offer to the Palestinians will be nothing short of a war plan.

* The writer teaches modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University in New York. He is the author of The Persistence of the Palestinian Question.

Source: Al-Ahram Weekly, Issue No. 997, 6 - 12 May 2010
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2010/997/re9.htm ]]> http://kanaanonline.org/ebulletin-en/?feed=rss2&p=298 http://kanaanonline.org/ebulletin-en/?p=296 http://kanaanonline.org/ebulletin-en/?p=296#comments Sun, 02 May 2010 11:37:43 +0000 masad http://kanaanonline.org/ebulletin-en/?p=296

Attorney Uncovers Documents Implicating

Vatican in Sexual Abuse Cover-up

A Radio Show Interview

(Kana’an eBulletin - Volume X - Issue 2238)

We speak with St. Paul-based attorney, Jeff Anderson, who has filed hundreds of lawsuits alleging sexual abuse by priests and bishops since 1983. He filed a lawsuit last week against the Vatican in a Milwaukee court and wants the Church to release any files it has on sexual abuse cases involving priests. It was his discovery of previously undisclosed documents that fueled the latest wave of accusations leading all the way up to the Vatican. [Includes rush transcript]

Guest:

Jeff Anderson, St. Paul-based attorney representing victims of sexual abuse. He has filed thousands of lawsuits against clerical abuse.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. I’m Amy Goodman. We’re on the road in Minneapolis. As we begin today with a look at the wave of sexual abuse allegations against Catholic priests all over the world. Earlier this month, Pope Benedict told victims of sexual abuse by priests in Malta that the Church was doing all it could to investigate the abuse accusations and bring those responsible to justice. But new revelations and claims of abuse continue to rock the Vatican. An investigation by The Associated Press suggests that Pope Benedict’s handpicked replacement to oversee abuse cases at the Vatican did nothing to restrict a California priest after learning that he had previously molested a thirteen-year-old boy. As the scandal spreads across Europe and Latin America, bishops in Ireland, Germany, and Belgium have resigned and new abuse allegations are emerging in Norway and Chile. Here in the United States an alleged victim of priest abuse in Wisconsin announced a lawsuit against the Vatican last week. The lawsuit alleges that Pope Benedict, in his former role as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, and two senior Vatican officials, failed to act when the Wisconsin church reported the alleged abuse by the late Father Joseph Murphy in the 1990s. The Vatican says the lawsuit is without merit and “rehashes old theories already rejected by U.S. courts.” Well, for more, I’m joined in Minneapolis by Jeff Anderson. He’s a St. Paul-based attorney who’s filed hundreds of lawsuits alleging sexual abuse by priests and bishops since 1983. He filed last week’s lawsuit against the Vatican in a Milwaukee court and wants the Church to release any files it has on sexual abuse cases involving priests. It was his discovery of previously undisclosed documents that fueled the latest wave of accusations leading all the way up to the Vatican. Jeff Anderson, we welcome you to Democracy Now!.

JEFF ANDERSON: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s very good to have you with us. Ok, why don’t you lay out the documents that you have uncovered.

JEFF ANDERSON: Well, the most recent documents involving Lawrence Murphy out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin have revealed to us, as we had known before, there is a direct documentary link from the cover-up of the priests of the local level by the archbishop to the Vatican. And in that case, it directly implicates then Cardinal Ratzinger and all those at the Department of the CDF at the Vatican.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain CDF.

JEFF ANDERSON: CDF is the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, appointed by the Pontiff to really keep these matters under secrecy seals and to investigate them to avoid scandal. And what the documents show us, as we have known for 25 years, is that the Vatican is really intending to keep the reputation of the clerics and the Catholic Church in tact. And while doing so, they are really imperiling the well-being of the children worldwide.

AMY GOODMAN: How did you get involved with this case?

JEFF ANDERSON: Well, this case is one of many we have been working on for twenty-five years. The case involving Lawrence Murphy, in particular, the documents came to us in forced discovery as a result of suits we brought some years ago. And these are documents that were just revealed to us. In the case brought in Milwaukee, which is one of many that have been brought across the country, what we’re learning, and what we have known to be the case for twenty-five years, is that all roads are leading to Rome. The decisions are made at the top of the pyramid by the Vatican. What we know is that the documentary trails that are being revealed showing that just like Lawrence Murphy and archbishop Weakland covering-up locally, they’re doing so under directions from Rome, from the Pontiff, from the Pope and his predecessor. And their directions and their laws and their protocols, which is what’s so alarming, require every cleric, every bishop, every cardinal all the way to Rome, to keep these matters secret to avoid scandal of the Universal Church. And in so doing, their concern is more about the reputation than the well-being of the children.

AMY GOODMAN: I was just in Wisconsin last night, Milwaukee. The story of this priest, lay it out in detail.

JEFF ANDERSON: Well, Lawrence Murphy was a priest that was in charge of the Deaf School at St. John’s in Milwaukee. He had many kids there who were impaired by reason of the fact they could not speak and particularly vulnerable, most of them Catholic. He would roam the dorms at night, picking out kids that he chose and clearly is revealed to everyone there that he abused, not dozens, but hundreds of kids. That became known in the 50s, 60s, 70s. In the mid 70s, scandal was about to break, and they moved him to another location at another place in Wisconsin. Then in the mid-90s, a scandal was about to begin and at that time, the archbishop couldn’t control the outbreak of scandal so he sought the assistance of Cardinal Ratzinger, then at the Vatican and said, “You need to take jurisdiction on this. We have to avoid scandal and remove this priest.” Cardinal Ratzinger, through his deputy and others, made a decision at that time, while knowing he abused many, many kids over many decades, became more concerned about their reputation. And thus as the documents have revealed to us, made the decision that they will keep Lawrence Murphy in ministry because it would be more scandalous to remove him than to keep them. So they allowed him to state in ministry, in good standing, until his death. All the while, ignoring the pleas of countless families and kids who were suffering in secrecy and silence and some shame.

AMY GOODMAN: The Catholic church talks about forgiveness and wanting to give these priests a chance, one of the things that have said. Yet when it discover a gay priest, they are out immediately. Not the same when it comes to a pedophile.

JEFF ANDERSON: Well, there are some deep contradictions in their particular theology, but what concerns us and the survivors most is their concern about reputation. And when they discover an offending priest versus a gay priest, let’s say, but an offending priest, a priest that commits crimes, they’re more concerned about concealing the crimes and protecting that priest and protecting the reputation than they are about removing that priest or reporting them to the law enforcement authorities, which they never, ever, if rarely, do.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain this latest wave of allegations. I mean, they’ve been coming out over years, but this one clearly is a tidal wave that the church now, going to the highest levels, has to deal with. What started this?

JEFF ANDERSON: Well, I think the latest wave of allegations coming to the fore that are right now on the stream of public consciousness in the U.S. and worldwide is really an accumulation of information. That has come to us and the survivors working with us and others through the lawsuits brought that have revealed documents and patterns and practices that have shown that time and time again, not tens or dozens of times, but hundreds and thousands of times, when a priest offends, they are required to by their superiors, from the bishop to the Vatican, to keep that secret. And that’s under protocols and laws developed by the Pontiff, by the Vatican that says “We are required to avoid scandal, to protect the reputation of the church and in so doing, are embedded with an ethos, a norm that says, we move the priest, avoid scandal, do not report it to anybody outside the clerical culture, and continue to move and protect the priest without regard to the well-being of the children.” And that’s why we see so many priests being recycled by so many bishops worldwide because the Vatican requires them to make a vow of silence, to make a promise of secrecy, and to be absolutely obedient to the protocols of Vatican [Inaudible].

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think needs to happen right now?

JEFF ANDERSON: Well, they have to be, they have to take action and they have to be made to take action. That is, this lawsuit and others like it that we are bringing are really demanding that they disgorge the secrets, that is the names of the offenders and all the files that evidence crimes committed, current and present, and they come forth with that, turn it over to law enforcement, discipline the bishops, the archbishops, and every top Vatican official that has been complicit in this cover-up. And come clean with the history that has now been revealed to us so that the children are better protected and that law enforcement and people outside the clerical culture are dealing with this instead of the Vatican and those under their control.

AMY GOODMAN: Jeff Anderson, you have filed hundreds of lawsuits on behalf of sexual abuse survivors. Why do you think we’re coming to a different point right now?

JEFF ANDERSON: Well, we’re really coming to a tipping point now because there has been, now, an accumulation of revelations over the last quarter-century that have revealed to us and now are revealing to the public, both in the U.S. and now worldwide, that there is an enormous problem. That all of us have been deferential to the Vatican and the Vatican officials, that is particularly acute, and the documents that have come through the lawsuits and the courage of the survivors finding their voice, are now finally revealing to us, and to the courts, that it is not being addressed. And that nothing has really fundamentally changed in the clerical culture. And that the decision of the Pontiff and at the Vatican, they’re fundamentally still operating under the same protocols of secrecy and self-protection that they did 100 years ago.

AMY GOODMAN: Jeff Anderson, I want to thank you for being with us Jeff Anderson is a St. Paul-based attorney who has filed hundreds of lawsuits alleging sexual abuse on the part of priests and bishops. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. We spend the rest of the hour in a rare extended interview with the punk rock legend Patti Smith.

::::::

Source: Democracy Now, Radio Show, New York. 29 April 2010

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/29/attorney_uncovers_docs_implicating_vatican_in ]]> http://kanaanonline.org/ebulletin-en/?feed=rss2&p=296 http://kanaanonline.org/ebulletin-en/?p=294 http://kanaanonline.org/ebulletin-en/?p=294#comments Sun, 02 May 2010 11:35:39 +0000 masad http://kanaanonline.org/ebulletin-en/?p=294

By William Astore
(Kana’an eBulletin - Volume X - Issue 2238)

Tomgram: William Astore, The Business of America Is Kleptocracy

By William Astore

It’s hard to miss these days. The headlines tell the story — repetitively. Everyone, it seems, is on the take. The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Goldman Sachs with securities fraud for creating and selling “a mortgage investment that was secretly intended to fail” — and then betting against its own customers. JPMorgan Chase which, in a pinch in 2008, happily took taxpayer dough, just reported $3.3 billion in profits for the first quarter of 2010, a jump of 55% over the previous quarter. The bank set aside $9.3 billion in what’s called “compensation and benefits” for its employees in 2009.

Even when they lose, they win. According to James Kwak of the Baseline Scenario website, on a deal in which JPMorgan swallowed $880 million in losses, its bankers still managed to walk away with up to $10 million in compensation. As he wrote, “JPMorgan’s bankers did just fine, despite having placed a ticking time bomb on their own bank’s balance sheet.” Meanwhile, Robert Rubin, who helped create the world that led to the 2008 financial meltdown as Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton, then took a top position at Citibank and made more than $100 million before it tanked on his watch. As economist Dean Baker puts it, “In the fall of 2008, when Citigroup was saved from bankruptcy with a taxpayer bailout, Rubin quietly slipped out the back door (with his money), resigning from his position at Citigroup.” Only recently Rubin made the headlines for offering the least apologetic (non-)apology imaginable for taking the American people to the cleaners.

And when it comes to taking, according to Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times, “more than 125 former Congressional aides and lawmakers are now working for financial firms as part of a multibillion-dollar effort to shape, and often scale back, federal regulatory power.” In other words, the regulators and their aides legislate the rules and then simply step through that infamous revolving door and pick up a handsome check on the other side. There are, in fact, at least 11,000 well-employed registered lobbyists in Washington today. A $3.4 billion “industry” in 2009, lobbying is definitely a field to get into, even in bad times, and according to the Christian Science Monitor, “when the cost of grass-roots efforts and of strategic advisers are all counted, total spending on influencing policy in Washington approaches $9.6 billion a year.”

As for the money flowing into politics from corporate deep pockets, 2008 not only saw the first billion-dollar presidential campaign, but at $1.7 billion, more than doubled the 2004 campaign’s costs, and no one expects 2012 to be anything but more expensive. All this is, of course, known to anyone who glances at the front page of a daily newspaper, but what exactly do we make of it all? What does it add up to? William Astore, historian and TomDispatch regular, has a suggestion, but before you start his piece, you might want to close your purse or button that back pocket with your wallet in it. Otherwise, they could be picked bare by the time you’re done.

Tom

American Kleptocracy
How Fears of Socialism and Fascism Hide Naked Theft
By William J. Astore

Kleptocracy — now, there’s a word I was taught to associate with corrupt and exploitative governments that steal ruthlessly and relentlessly from the people. It’s a word, in fact, that’s usually applied to flawed or failed governments in Africa, Latin America, or the nether regions of Asia. Such governments are typically led by autocratic strong men who shower themselves and their cronies with all the fruits of extracted wealth, whether stolen from the people or squeezed from their country’s natural resources. It’s not a word you’re likely to see associated with a mature republic like the United States led by disinterested public servants and regulated by more-or-less transparent principles and processes.

In fact, when Americans today wish to critique or condemn their government, the typical epithets used are “socialism” or “fascism.” When my conservative friends are upset, they send me emails with links to material about “ObamaCare” and the like. These generally warn of a future socialist takeover of the private realm by an intrusive, power-hungry government. When my progressive friends are upset, they send me emails with links pointing to an incipient fascist takeover of our public and private realms, led by that same intrusive, power-hungry government (and, I admit it, I’m hardly innocent when it comes to such “what if” scenarios).

What if, however, instead of looking at where our government might be headed, we took a closer look at where we are – at the power-brokers who run or influence our government, at those who are profiting and prospering from it? These are, after all, the “winners” in our American world in terms of the power they wield and the wealth they acquire. And shouldn’t we be looking as well at those Americans who are losing — their jobs, their money, their homes, their healthcare, their access to a better way of life — and asking why?

If we were to take an honest look at America’s blasted landscape of “losers” and the far shinier, spiffier world of “winners,” we’d have to admit that it wasn’t signs of onrushing socialism or fascism that stood out, but of staggeringly self-aggrandizing greed and theft right in the here and now. We’d notice our public coffers being emptied to benefit major corporations and financial institutions working in close alliance with, and passing on remarkable sums of money to, the representatives of “the people.” We’d see, in a word, kleptocracy on a scale to dazzle. We would suddenly see an almost magical disappearing act being performed, largely without comment, right before our eyes.

Of Red Herrings and Missing Pallets of Money

Think of socialism and fascism as the red herrings of this moment or, if you’re an old time movie fan, as Hitchcockian MacGuffins — in other words, riveting distractions. Conservatives and tea partiers fear invasive government regulation and excessive taxation, while railing against government takeovers — even as corporate lobbyists write our public healthcare bills to favor private interests. Similarly, progressives rail against an emergent proto-fascist corps of private guns-for-hire, warrantless wiretapping, and the potential government-approved assassination of U.S. citizens, all sanctioned by a perpetual, and apparently open-ended, state of war.

Yet, if this is socialism, why are private health insurers the government’s go-to guys for healthcare coverage? If this is fascism, why haven’t the secret police rounded up tea partiers and progressive critics as well and sent them to the lager or the gulag?

Consider this: America is not now, nor has it often been, a hotbed of political radicalism. We have no substantial socialist or workers’ party. (Unless you’re deluded, please don’t count the corporate-friendly “Democrat” party here.) We have no substantial fascist party. (Unless you’re deluded, please don’t count the cartoonish “tea partiers” here; these predominantly white, graying, and fairly affluent Americans seem most worried that the jackbooted thugs will be coming for them.)

What drives America today is, in fact, business — just as was true in the days of Calvin Coolidge. But it’s not the fair-minded “free enterprise” system touted in those freshly revised Texas guidelines for American history textbooks; rather, it’s a rigged system of crony capitalism that increasingly ends in what, if we were looking at some other country, we would recognize as an unabashed kleptocracy.

Recall, if you care to, those pallets stacked with hundreds of millions of dollars that the Bush administration sent to Iraq and which, Houdini-like, simply disappeared. Think of the ever-rising cost of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, now in excess of a trillion dollars, and just whose pockets are full, thanks to them.

If you want to know the true state of our government and where it’s heading, follow the money (if you can) and remain vigilant: our kleptocratic Houdinis are hard at work, seeking to make yet more money vanish from your pockets — and reappear in theirs.

From Each According to His Gullibility — To Each According to His Greed

Never has the old adage my father used to repeat to me — “the rich get richer and the poor poorer” — seemed fresher or truer. If you want confirmation of just where we are today, for instance, consider this passage from a recent piece by Tony Judt:

In 2005, 21.2 percent of U.S. national income accrued to just 1 percent of earners. Contrast 1968, when the CEO of General Motors took home, in pay and benefits, about sixty-six times the amount paid to a typical GM worker. Today the CEO of Wal-Mart earns nine hundred times the wages of his average employee. Indeed, the wealth of the Wal-Mart founder’s family in 2005 was estimated at about the same ($90 billion) as that of the bottom 40 percent of the U.S. population: 120 million people.

Wealth concentration is only one aspect of our increasingly kleptocratic system. War profiteering by corporations (however well disguised as heartfelt support for our heroic warfighters) is another. Meanwhile, retired senior military officers typically line up to cash in on the kleptocratic equivalent of welfare, peddling their “expertise” in return for impressive corporate and Pentagon payouts that supplement their six-figure pensions. Even that putative champion of the Carhartt-wearing common folk, Sarah Palin, pocketed a cool $12 million last year without putting the slightest dent in her populist bona fides.

Based on such stories, now legion, perhaps we should rewrite George Orwell’s famous tagline from Animal Farm as: All animals are equal, but a few are so much more equal than others.

And who are those “more equal” citizens? Certainly, major corporations, which now enjoy a kind of political citizenship and the largesse of a federal government eager to rescue them from their financial mistakes, especially when they’re judged “too big to fail.” In raiding the U.S. Treasury, big banks and investment firms, shamelessly ready to jack up executive pay and bonuses even after accepting billions in taxpayer-funded bailouts, arguably outgun militarized multinationals in the conquest of the public realm and the extraction of our wealth for their benefit.

Such kleptocratic outfits are, of course, abetted by thousands of lobbyists and by politicians who thrive off corporate campaign contributions. Indeed, many of our more prominent public servants have proved expert at spinning through the revolving door into the private sector. Even ex-politicians who prefer to be seen as sympathetic to the little guy like former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt eagerly cash in.

I’m Shocked, Shocked, to Find Profiteering Going on Here

An old Roman maxim enjoins us to “let justice be done, though the heavens fall.” Within our kleptocracy, the prevailing attitude is an insouciant “We’ll get ours, though the heavens fall.” This mindset marks the decline of our polity. A spirit of shared sacrifice, dismissed as hopelessly naïve, has been replaced by a form of tribalized privatization in which insiders find ways to profit no matter what.

Is it any surprise then that, in seeking to export our form of government to Iraq and Afghanistan, we’ve produced not two model democracies, but two emerging kleptocracies, fueled respectively by oil and opium?

When we confront corruption in Iraq or Afghanistan, are we not like the police chief in the classic movie Casablanca who is shocked, shocked to find gambling going on at Rick’s Café, even as he accepts his winnings?

Why then do we bother to feign shock when Iraqi and Afghan elites, a tiny minority, seek to enrich themselves at the expense of the majority?

Shouldn’t we be flattered? Imitation, after all, is the sincerest form of flattery. Isn’t it?

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William J. Astore is a TomDispatch regular; he teaches History at the Pennsylvania College of Technology and served in the Air Force for 20 years, retiring as a lieutenant colonel. He may be reached at wjastore@gmail.com.

Source: TomDispatch
URL:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175235/

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