Ignoring that a recent BBC investigation had determined that “al-Qaida” was an intelligence community fabrication, US media trots out bin Laden papers “seized during raid” for latest Borat-style mocking of Islam.
Headlines about Sunday’s midnight massacre in Kandahar transformed quickly from NATO FORCES RAID to become LONE GUNMAN KILLS 16, as the attributed sources shifted from Afghan locals on the scene to US military spokesmen. One might argue it’s in the interest of national security to attribute the murders in Balandi and Alkozai to a solitary stalker, to tamp the swelling anger of the Afghan populace, but what’s the truth? Making a rare concession, the NYT has revised its headline a 3rd time to read LONE SOLDIER SAID TO BE KILLER OF 16 AFGHANS, and the BBC puts “ACTED ALONE” in quotes. (UPDATE: AP adds “allegedly” and LA Times “apparently”)
Pundits stroke our soldiers’ egos by asking could one special forces soldier alone kill so many (?!), but more difficult to imagine is how a rogue fighter can equip himself and pass through multiple security defenses unobserved. Also doubtful is how and why a stealth assassin would burn the victims’ bodies as he moved about. Easier to believe is that damage control decided it best that one man take the fall for his comrades, God and country, probably the one too drunk to object.
Dick Cheney has confirmed Donald Rumsfeld’s Freudian slip, that Flight 93 crashed on 9-11 because it was intercepted by a US missile, not due to a cockpit tug of war. (Americans can probably agree that hijacked planes must be shot down — but what if the passengers have subdued their attackers?) Next, the BBC confirmed that “Al-Qaeda” is and always has been the US war propaganda industry’s figment of imagination. And the Western Media carries on as if the official narrative has not sighted its iceberg, and to abuse a further idiom, like there’s no tomorrow.
When i first set out to write this blog i had no intention of writing about geopolitics, or anything any bigger than my own little world, or to develop any sort of readership at all, let alone to kick up international interest. Who knew? Since the time i started, Adbuster’s Occupy movement has overtaken the whole world and i’ve become a part of it, along with apparently millions of fellow humans dissatisfied with aspects of the concentric and overlapping political systems that govern and control the minutiae of our daily lives. Occupy has struck a chord that resonates well beyond what seems to have been its original intent as well.
Adbuster asserts in its campaign web-page opener that, “we vow to end the monied corruption of our democracy,” speaking, one assumes of U.S. democracy, even though Adbusters is a Canadian publication founded by Kalle Lasn, an Estonian. Adbusters itself claims to be a, “global network of culture jammers and creatives,” and that their Occupy is, “[i]nspired by the Egyptian Tahrir Square uprising and the Spanish acampadas.” One should note that Adbusters is a non-profit organization with aspirations and effect well beyond the confines of the magazine at its core.
Many of my dear intrepid friends struggle mightily with the unavoidable nature of the movement in which we all participate. Occupy Colorado Springs, (OCS), has garnered a fair amount of attention both because of its early acquisition of a city permit to camp on the sidewalk, and for its fragmentary infighting. Strong personalities have clashed fairly spectacularly for what scale we’re dealing with here, and precisely the same arguments are on display at Occupy web-pages all over the U.S., as well as abroad. Here, many patriotic, nationally oriented players have concentrated on addressing the U.S. Constitution and the influence of corporate interests in Washington, D.C. politics. Others have been caught up in causes of personal concern as the “focus” of the overall movement has grown more and more diffuse. The bickering and difficulty in reaching consensus has been frustrating but, i suggest, not unhealthy or out of place.
Adbusters, following ques from the Middle East and Spain, deliberately set off a “leaderless” movement, and has fastidiously avoided taking hold of any sort of control of what has developed since, refusing even media interviews for fear of exercising undue influence. Occupy remains a leaderless movement. Various groups and individuals have issued lists of demands; the one linked there, “is representative of those participating on this [particular ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Facebook] page.” We Occupiers have much common ground, which has served well to bring us all together, and will continue to serve as we gather to discuss and bicker over issues and particulars. There is plenty to differentiate amongst us as well, on individual and other categorical bases, but we have recognized, more or less, an essential humanity that has us willing to stand in freezing temperatures if we live in the northern hemisphere, and subject ourselves to the slow, often painful process of learning to live together.
Some among us, as we have seen right here in Colorado Springs, are very uncomfortable indeed with the amorphous nature of the Movement. We have seen splintering, censorship wars, general Assemblies that devolve into shouting matches, and the development of personal animosities. These phenomena are repeated on a grander scale throughout the Movement while observers gloat over the imminent dissolution of Occupy unity. Neither we Occupiers nor the Movement’s detractors ought to be misled by these birth pains. Our situation as humans, or for that matter any other creature inhabitant of the Earth has been rendered fully untenable by humans competing for dominance. The upheaval we engage from our Colorado Springs street corner, or from squares in Manchester, Belgrade, Cairo, and etc. is the natural response of rats in a corner. Were it not for the fact that we humans indeed possess reasoning capacity beyond a rat’s we really would be screwed. Fortune, or Divine providence, or evolution, or whatever mechanism or mechanisms turn(s) out to be true has granted us the tools that, utilized with empathy at every turn may–just may–allow us to work our way out of the massive pickle in which we’ve put ourselves. Nothing about this will be easy, quick, or for most, especially comfortable.
The Movement is leaderless. This is an existential fact. No matter how strenuously individuals attempt to grab hold of reigns, or to turn them over to others, there is no authority behind the Movement other than the profound spiritual authority of its essential Idea. The financial disparities that we have focused on here in the U.S. are real, and the supra-national bodies that control our government with full directive power are the same bodies that separate people from power in every nation on Earth. Each issue that has arisen into the Movement’s overall consciousness, from derivative markets, to marijuana law, to camping on public property is part and parcel of the whole thing, which itself amounts to such a gigantic, lumpen juggernaut that we have a hard time gathering our thoughts around the whole thing at once. We must.
Many U.S. citizens, including some prominent in and around OCS, have expressed insistent nationalism. Muslims and Christians around the world have pushed religions agendas. Nationalism is by no means confined to the U.S.A. Our corporate, non-personal enemy and its personal, human operators are Global already, and use these divisions to our detriment! At a Colorado College faculty panel yesterday, much ado was made of income disparities and market finagling by Wall Street financiers. We can isolate our minds all we want, but we can not eliminate the fact that Wall Street, Fleet Street, Singapore, Hong Kong, the House of Saud, whatever, whatever, are already one indivisible entity, operating in opposition to any concern for overall humanity or household priorities for any of us as inhabitants of the planet, including the natural requirements of the controllers. The Idea of competition and profit has acquired an independent life of its own and has prevented even those at the top of the unwieldy pyramid from living lives connected to the most valuable prizes of all, which we humans have recognized throughout our history and recorded in odes, songs, and literature to be transcendent of politics and possessions. The statistics cited by those college economists, and the many Occupiers that mention them in speeches and lists of demands are quite real, and Americans might note that Kurdish, Nepali, and Palestinian Occupiers, for example, skew the stats we’ve been flailing our arms about here even further, and that “First World” exploitation is a very large part of this discussion, indeed.
There can be little doubt that the “Wall Street” entities in control of our various governments have planned for and directed events toward a “New World Order” for decades, if not centuries. Lots of justifiably paranoid conspiracy watchers all over the planet have done their best to alert their fellows to this alarming and unacceptable development for as long as it has been in the mix. The Vatican, a power with negative credibility in its adherence to its own doctrine, has offered itself up as a potential controller of a global banking scheme. Currently entrenched power-brokers will absolutely without question attempt to co-opt and control the current Movement. We humans are not interested in more of the same bullshit, plus the added benefit of still more bullshit! We occupiers are fully Sovereign, each in his or her own right. We are leaderless by design, which is the natural development of the abject failure of our leaders, and in fact of the failure of the very foundation of our interaction amongst ourselves that has developed without much direction for at least the 10,000 year span during which we have written about it. Those who resist this fact will find little more than inversely correlated discomfort in their resistance. One can deny the nature of a rhinoceros till one’s dying day, but the beast remains a rhinoceros, and the denier’s last day may well come on the day he encounters a rhinoceros.
Sovereign consensus building is not democracy. It’s something we humans have never attempted on the scale we Occupiers are attempting now. Broad-scale cooperation as a foundation is against an established competitive approach that we have fallen into by default for a long, long time. Voting one another into submission will not work, simply because we have let the cat out of the bag. We noble individuals are learning a brand-new thing, like it or not, because a rhinoceros has smashed the freakin’ house down. I, for one will not abandon the Liberty of my own Sovereignty, no matter who votes what, nor will i abandon the respect i hold for each other Sovereign in the entire mix. I recognize the differences between whatever groups or persons are in the whole wide world. Categorical observations are real, so far as they go; but i won;t be bound by them. I won’t be forced to fight against the 1% simply because i am a member of the 99%. Rather i will be fighting with every fiber of my being for the 100% of us who will ALL be trampled by the rhinoceros, in pretty danged short order, unless we ALL relinquish our insistence on control, avarice, and irresponsibility of all stripes.
Each of us has a part to play, a purpose to serve. Never abandon what you know. Work hard at open discussion. Don’t be embarrassed by frustrating moments or attempt to hide your own humanity. Withdraw for a moment if you need to to prevent overboiling passions. We’re all in this together. Be patient Brothers and Sisters; this is gonna hurt some….
OWS List of Demands:
www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=157161391040462
Adbusters:
www.adbusters.org/campaigns/occupywallstreet
NPR:
www.npr.org/2011/10/20/141526467/exploring-occupy-wall-streets-adbuster-origins
Middle Eastern origins:
www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/apr/09/libya-egypt-syria-yemen-live-updates
Acampadas:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13466977
On the subject of historical misconceptions, you might say I’m hugely sentimental. So the tale of Lili Marlene catches me up like a honey trap. What does the name conjure for you? A Nazi Mata Hari? A fictional musical persona beloved by soldiers on both sides of the Good War? While even antiwar sentiments wax nostalgic about its universal love-conquers-all popularity, the WWII melody evokes romantic memories fueled by dueling propagandas. And when a victorious meme writes the history, it can erase its footprints, leading from what was effectively a literary rape.
A recent folk reference for example, an otherwise impeccably adroit Lili Marlene Walks Away, about Marlene the streetwalker, leaves me just sick in the heart.
The historical narrative has it that Lili Marlene was actually Lili and Marleen, two girlfriends for whom German soldier Hans Liep pined from the trenches of WWI. With unchivalrous poetic license Liep conflated the two and penned a love poem as it might have been written to him, “signed, Lili Marleen.” Two decades later a German composer set the words to music and then came the outbreak of the next war. The original recording by Lale Anderson was a flop until broadcasts to the front lines over Radio Belgrade captivated homesick Wehrmacht soldiers and eventually the lovelorn battling on both sides. Lili Marlene emerged the most popular song of all time, translated in as many languages as fought in the war. Was this owed to a universal empathy toward the pangs of love, or was it the appeal of a truly catchy melody and lyrics carefully crafted to suit the moment? And how did Lili’s character become redefined?
For the German audience, the character of Lili Marlene did not change. For some the song lost its sheen for having been co-opted by the Third Reich war machine. But even as the singer’s living embodiment of “Lili Marleen” became tarnished by her Faustian-won fame, the title role of “Lili” remained the non-fictional love interest with whom her soldier lover spent every furtive off-duty moment, revisited in memory and in anticipation. Concurrent translations across the European continent stuck to the same essential theme, owing no doubt to listeners being in the main multilingual. They understood enough of the original German not to be sold another Lili Marlene. English was another story, but the Allies didn’t start it.
Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels at first banned the song because he saw it as demoralizing to soldiers enduring the deprivations of war. He referred to Lili Marlene as “The tearjerker with the death-dance smell” until its popularity reached a critical mass even he couldn’t stop. When opposing forces seemed also to succumb to the song’s wiles, Goebbels sought to intensify the poison’s venom.
The original German lyric was written in an ambiguous voice, either that of the soldier or his faithful girl, revisiting their every last moment together and the promise of more. Even as the imagery may have been accepted as a soldier’s fantasies, the singer’s female gender was consistent with the voice of his lover’s reassurances. As a result, the original singer came to personify the character Lili Marleen. For soldiers of every side the voice they heard was that of “Lili Marlene.”
The popular account goes that when Allied soldiers were observed singing along to Radio Belgrade, an English lyric was ordered post haste lest American GIs and British Tommies be singing in German. Rarely mentioned is that the seduction interrupted had been in English.
A recent compilation of nearly 200 different renditions of Lili Marlene gives an unprecedented look into the WWII propaganda battle waged over control of the Lili Marlene narrative. Many of the key recordings have reached Youtube.
When the Germans surmised that Allied soldiers wanted to do more than whistle along, a lyric was devised for them which changed the ambiguity of the narrator to the first person. YOUR Lili Marleen became MY Lili Marlene. And oddly, but for reasons un-mysterious obviously, the vocalist remained a woman. The English version was supposed to be a translation after all, and no one was under any illusion that the song’s original appeal with soldiers was not owed to the enchantment of the chanteuse.
The plodding, dripping sentimentality of the melody also lent well to marches. Lili Marleen, in English, Marlene, was an ideal tonic for a war long on effort and deprivation.
An American GI today could still be forgiven for hearing Lili Marlene and saying: those aren’t the lyrics I remember. Late and post war USO tours effaced the earlier Nazi radio broadcasts. There was a German English version before the British and American after that, when Lili of the home front became the seductress became the whore.
If the song conjures an American image at all, it’s Marlene Dietrich, who subsequently claimed the song for her own, perhaps why it’s named Marlene and not Marleen, I don’t know. But her vampy rendition colors interpretations to this day. An American film star from the 30s, Dietrich is still mistakenly remembered as a reformed German double agent, possibly the Axis Sally propagandist who originated her namesake song. 
To my mind, familiarity would be the only reason to favor Dietrich’s rendition of Lili Marlene. The original 1938 German and its first English incarnation in 1942 were both by Lale Andersen, easily the most moving. But Marlene Dietrich wasn’t selling love, or was, to be more precise.
The lyric to the original German recording translates thus:
In front of the barracks, in front of the main gate,
Stood a lamppost, if it stands there still,
So will we see each other there again,
By the lamppost we’ll stand,
As before, Lili Marleen. As before, Lili Marleen.Our two shadows looked like one.
That we were so much in love, at a glance anyone could see.
And everyone will see it,
When we stand by the lamppost,
As before, Lili Marleen. As before, Lili Marleen.
(The motif of female narrator was conceded by a 1943 BBC propaganda rerecording made for broadcast back to Germany. Instead of a love song, the lyric became a war-weary rant where a hoarse-throated middle-aged “Lili” calls for an uprising against Hitler. Loosely translated it went:
Maybe you’ll die in Russia, maybe you’ll die in Africa,
You will die somewhere, that’s what your Führer wants.
But if you see us again, where will this lamppost be?
In another Germany.
Your Lili Marleen.The Führer is a oppressor, that’s what we all see,
Making every child an orphan, every woman a widow,
It’s all his fault, I want to see? him at the lamppost,
Hang him up at the lamppost.
Your Lili Marleen.
)
The German propagandists were more insidious with their subversion of Andersen’s 1942 recording, sticking closely to the original setting, shifting the narrator squarely to the male, relegating Lili not just to the third person but to the past, and interjecting heaping doses of sentimentality:
Underneath the lantern, by the barrack gate,
There I met Marleen every night at eight.
That was a time in early Spring,
When birds all sing, then love was king
Of my heart and Marleen’s, of my heart and Marleen’s.
The next verse begins with a cringe-worthy overstep of a military put-down, perhaps however to divert critical faculties from the real manipulation. Even though the song is now in English, the soldiers expect it serves German propaganda. Disarmed by the amateurish mocking of “retreat,” the listener is vulnerable as the rest of the lyric preys on a soldier’s insecurity about his sweetheart’s fidelity, the longer the war years become interminable. The subject is the usual propaganda leaflet fare, but animated with the potency of music. Faithful “as before” became “time would part” Marlene.
Waiting for the drumbeat, signaling retreat,
Walking in the shadows, where all lovers meet.
Yes those were days of long ago,
I loved her so, I couldn’t know
That time would part Marleen, that time would part Marleen.
The pace leadens to deliver the fatal pronouncement, again the anticipation of reunion becomes perseveration and lament:
When I heard the bugle, calling me away,
By the gate I kissed her, kissed her tears away.
And by the flick’ring lantern’s light,
I held her tight, t’was our last night,
My last night with Marleen, my last night with Marleen.
The last verse repeats the first, which I omitted earlier. It’s a call to action, obviously absent the original, “Now is the time-” meaning desertion into the aforementioned shadows, “to meet your-” and I must admit to be unsure of a transcription. From Andersen’s accent to the unclear recording quality of her backup chorus, it’s difficult to determine whom Lili wants the soldier to meet. “Your girl” and two other words which rhyme with girl, the first begins with P, the last with S.
Still I hear the bugle, hear its silv’ry call,
Carried by the night air, telling one and all:
Now is the time to meet your pearl,
To meet your girl, to meet your soul,
As once I met Marleen, my sweet Lili Marleen.
Your girl, not Lili Marleen. She’s gone, a love lost to regret. In their German-accented affected English, the male chorus appeared to provide a mocking echo “Now is the time to meet your death.”
Needless to say it was imperative that while Radio Belgrade reached the English and American soldiers in North Africa and Italy, the Allies had to record an antidote. A first version by a Brit kept with the romantic original:
In the dark of evening, where you stand and wait,
Hangs a lantern gleaming by the barrack gate.
We’ll meet again by lantern shine
As we did once upon a time.
We two Lili Marlene, we two Lili Marlene.Our shadows once stood facing, a tall one and a small.
They mingled in embracing, upon the lighted wall.
And passers by could see and tell
Who kissed my shadow there so well:
My girl Lili Marlene, my girl Lili Marlene.
But that didn’t address the problem of demoralization, Goebbels’ original concern shared by military commanders no matter which side: soldiers overtaken by depression.
Plus the Allies needed less a song about the girl back home than one about the German lass awaiting the Yankee conqueror. Who are we kidding? Lili Marlene’s German voice did not invoke thoughts of home so much as a foreign woman taunting, however innocent, from behind enemy lines. Eventually those lands would be overrun, her lover to die in their defense, Lili to await the last man standing. How many soldiers listened to Radio Belgrade and did not fantasize about cuckolding their adversary with his beloved Lili Marlene? 
The Allied troops needed a Lili of not-unfaithful character, but one available to them. It was no big leap for an American lyricist to transform Fritz’s Lili, faithfully waiting for him under the lamppost, to “Lili of the Lamplight,” the only type of German woman with whom American GIs would be able to get near, a prostitute.
Underneath the lantern by the barrack gate,
Darling I remember the way you used to wait.
Twas there that you whispered tenderly
That you loved me, you’d always be
My Lili of the lamplight, my own Lili Marlene.
You’ll always be mine? My love? No, my lover by the lamplight. In the new scheme, the mentions of love and tears become sublimated by kisses, caresses, whispers of tender nothings and feet waiting in the street. Sung to the Allied troops as they marched unto Berlin by a husky voiced vamp. That’s your Lili Marlene.
We call it the Iraq War, as we did the Vietnam War, but America’s wars aren’t so-named in the host countries. It’s the Iraq Invasion, not War, and Afghanistan Invasion really, now Occupation, Decimation and Holocaust. Journalist filmmaker John Pilger subscribes to the theory that if a public is let to see the horrors of war, it will refuse to participate. His new documentary THE WAR YOU DON’T SEE traces US and UK efforts since WWI to propagandize war. Amid interviews with news bureau chiefs who he holds culpable for hyping war, Pilger shows censored footage which could have turned public opinion. I have to wonder if a simple sequence of an Iraqi home subjected to a US raid, in particular the focus on a young daughter’s anxiety, would not have broken just enough American hearts.
Celebrated reporter -and verb- Robert Fisk had harsh words, “danger words” he called them, for host Al-Jazeera where he gave an address about the language of power which has infected newsman and reader alike. Beware your unambiguous acceptance of empty terms into which state propagandists let you infer nuance: power players, activism, non-state actors, key players, geostrategic players, narratives, external players, meaningful solutions, –meaning what?
I’ll not divulge why these stung Al-J, but I’d like to detail the full list, and commit not to condone their false usage at NMT, without ridicule, “quotes” or disclaimer.
Fisk listed several expressions which he attributes to government craftsmen. Unfortunately journalists have been parroting these terms without questioning their dubious meaning. Fisk began with a favorite, the endless, disingenuous, “peace process.” What is that – victor-defined purgatory? Why would “peace” be a “process” Fisk asks.
How appropriate that some of the West’s strongest critics are linguists. Fisk lauded the current seagoing rescue of Gaza, the convoy determined to break the Israeli blockade. He compared it to the Berlin Airlift, when governments saw fit to help besieged peoples, even former enemies. This time however, the people have to act where their governments do not.
I read recently that the Gaza Freedom Flotilla might be preparing accommodations for Noam Chomsky to join the passage. Won’t that be an escalation? I imagine if Robert Fisk would climb aboard too, it would spell doom for any chance the relief supplies would reach the Gazans. A ship convoy with Chomsky and Fisk on board would present an opportunity that an Israeli torpedo could not resist.
Here is his list. If you can’t peruse the lecture, at least ponder these words with as much skepticism as you can. The parenthesis denote my shorthand.
peace process (detente under duress, while enduring repression)
“Peace of the Brave” (accept your subjugation, coined for Algeria, then France lost)
“Hearts and Minds” (Vietnam era psych-ops, then US lost)
spike (to avoid saying: increase)
surge (reinforcements, you send them in you’re losing)
key players (only puppets and their masters need apply)
back on track (the objective has been on rails?)
peace envoy (in mob-speak: the cleaner)
road map (winner’s bill of lading for the spoils)
experts (vetted opinions)
indirect talks (concurrent soliloquies, duets performed solo in proximity to common fiddler calling tune)
competing narratives (parallel universes in one? naturally the perpetrator is going to tell a different tale, disputing that of victim’s; ungoing result is no justice and no injustice) examples:
occupied vs. disputed;
wall vs. security barrier;
colonization vs settlements, outposts or Jewish neighborhoods.
foreign fighters (them, but always us)
Af-Pak (ignores third party India and thus dispute to Kashmir)
appeasers (sissies who don’t have bully’s back)
Weapons of Mass Destruction (not Iraq, now not Iran)
think tanks (ministry of propaganda privatized)
challenges (avoids they are problems)
intervention (asserted authority by military force)
change agents (by undisclosed means?)
Until asked otherwise, I’ll append Fisk’s talk here:
Robert Fisk, The Independent newspaper’s Middle East correspondent, gave the following address to the fifth Al Jazeera annual forum on May 23.
Power and the media are not just about cosy relationships between journalists and political leaders, between editors and presidents. They are not just about the parasitic-osmotic relationship between supposedly honourable reporters and the nexus of power that runs between White House and state department and Pentagon, between Downing Street and the foreign office and the ministry of defence. In the western context, power and the media is about words – and the use of words.
It is about semantics.
It is about the employment of phrases and clauses and their origins. And it is about the misuse of history; and about our ignorance of history.
More and more today, we journalists have become prisoners of the language of power.
Is this because we no longer care about linguistics? Is this because lap-tops ‘correct’ our spelling, ‘trim’ our grammar so that our sentences so often turn out to be identical to those of our rulers? Is this why newspaper editorials today often sound like political speeches?
Let me show you what I mean.
For two decades now, the US and British – and Israeli and Palestinian – leaderships have used the words ‘peace process’ to define the hopeless, inadequate, dishonourable agreement that allowed the US and Israel to dominate whatever slivers of land would be given to an occupied people.
I first queried this expression, and its provenance, at the time of Oslo – although how easily we forget that the secret surrenders at Oslo were themselves a conspiracy without any legal basis. Poor old Oslo, I always think! What did Oslo ever do to deserve this? It was the White House agreement that sealed this preposterous and dubious treaty – in which refugees, borders, Israeli colonies – even timetables – were to be delayed until they could no longer be negotiated.
And how easily we forget the White House lawn – though, yes, we remember the images – upon which it was Clinton who quoted from the Qur’an, and Arafat who chose to say: “Thank you, thank you, thank you, Mr. President.” And what did we call this nonsense afterwards? Yes, it was ‘a moment of history’! Was it? Was it so?
Do you remember what Arafat called it? “The peace of the brave.” But I don’t remember any of us pointing out that “the peace of the brave” was used originally by General de Gaulle about the end of the Algerian war. The French lost the war in Algeria. We did not spot this extraordinary irony.
Same again today. We western journalists – used yet again by our masters – have been reporting our jolly generals in Afghanistan as saying that their war can only be won with a “hearts and minds” campaign. No-one asked them the obvious question: Wasn’t this the very same phrase used about Vietnamese civilians in the Vietnam war? And didn’t we – didn’t the West – lose the war in Vietnam?
Yet now we western journalists are actually using – about Afghanistan – the phrase ‘hearts and minds’ in our reports as if it is a new dictionary definition rather than a symbol of defeat for the second time in four decades, in some cases used by the very same soldiers who peddled this nonsense – at a younger age – in Vietnam.
Just look at the individual words which we have recently co-opted from the US military.
When we westerners find that ‘our’ enemies – al-Qaeda, for example, or the Taliban -have set off more bombs and staged more attacks than usual, we call it ‘a spike in violence’. Ah yes, a ‘spike’!
A ‘spike’ in violence, ladies and gentlemen is a word first used, according to my files, by a brigadier general in the Baghdad Green Zone in 2004. Yet now we use that phrase, we extemporise on it, we relay it on the air as our phrase. We are using, quite literally, an expression created for us by the Pentagon. A spike, of course, goes sharply up, then sharply downwards. A ‘spike’ therefore avoids the ominous use of the words ‘increase in violence’ – for an increase, ladies and gentlemen, might not go down again afterwards.
Now again, when US generals refer to a sudden increase in their forces for an assault on Fallujah or central Baghdad or Kandahar – a mass movement of soldiers brought into Muslim countries by the tens of thousands – they call this a ‘surge’. And a surge, like a tsunami, or any other natural phenomena, can be devastating in its effects. What these ‘surges’ really are – to use the real words of serious journalism – are reinforcements. And reinforcements are sent to wars when armies are losing those wars. But our television and newspaper boys and girls are still talking about ‘surges’ without any attribution at all! The Pentagon wins again.
Meanwhile the ‘peace process’ collapsed. Therefore our leaders – or ‘key players’ as we like to call them – tried to make it work again. Therefore the process had to be put ‘back on track’. It was a railway train, you see. The carriages had come off the line. So the train had to be put ‘back on track’. The Clinton administration first used this phrase, then the Israelis, then the BBC.
But there was a problem when the ‘peace process’ had been put ‘back on track’ – and still came off the line. So we produced a ‘road map’ – run by a Quartet and led by our old Friend of God, Tony Blair, who – in an obscenity of history – we now refer to as a ‘peace envoy’.
But the ‘road map’ isn’t working. And now, I notice, the old ‘peace process’ is back in our newspapers and on our television screens. And two days ago, on CNN, one of those boring old fogies that the TV boys and girls call ‘experts’ – I’ll come back to them in a moment – told us again that the ‘peace process’ was being put ‘back on track’ because of the opening of ‘indirect talks’ between Israelis and Palestinians.
Ladies and gentlemen, this isn’t just about clichés – this is preposterous journalism. There is no battle between power and the media. Through language, we have become them.
Maybe one problem is that we no longer think for ourselves because we no longer read books. The Arabs still read books – I’m not talking here about Arab illiteracy rates – but I’m not sure that we in the West still read books. I often dictate messages over the phone and find I have to spend ten minutes to repeat to someone’s secretary a mere hundred words. They don’t know how to spell.
I was on a plane the other day, from Paris to Beirut – the flying time is about three hours and 45 minutes – and the woman next to me was reading a French book about the history of the Second World War. And she was turning the page every few seconds. She had finished the book before we reached Beirut! And I suddenly realised she wasn’t reading the book – she was surfing the pages! She had lost the ability to what I call ‘deep read’. Is this one of our problems as journalists, I wonder, that we no longer ‘deep read’? We merely use the first words that come to hand …
Let me show you another piece of media cowardice that makes my 63-year-old teeth grind together after 34 years of eating humus and tahina in the Middle East.
We are told, in so many analysis features, that what we have to deal with in the Middle East are ‘competing narratives’. How very cosy. There’s no justice, no injustice, just a couple of people who tell different history stories. ‘Competing narratives’ now regularly pop up in the British press. The phrase is a species – or sub-species – of the false language of anthropology. It deletes the possibility that one group of people – in the Middle East, for example – are occupied, while another group of people are doing the occupying. Again, no justice, no injustice, no oppression or oppressing, just some friendly ‘competing narratives’, a football match, if you like, a level playing field because the two sides are – are they not – ‘in competition’. It’s two sides in a football match. And two sides have to be given equal time in every story.
So an ‘occupation’ can become a ‘dispute’. Thus a ‘wall’ becomes a ‘fence’ or a ‘security barrier’. Thus Israeli colonisation of Arab land contrary to all international law becomes ‘settlements’ or ‘outposts’ or ‘Jewish neighbourhoods’.
You will not be surprised to know that it was Colin Powell, in his starring, powerless appearance as secretary of state to George W. Bush, who told US diplomats in the Middle East to refer to occupied Palestinian land as ‘disputed land’ – and that was good enough for most of the American media.
So watch out for ‘competing narratives’, ladies and gentlemen. There are no ‘competing narratives’, of course, between the US military and the Taliban. When there are, however, you’ll know the West has lost.
But I’ll give you a lovely, personal example of how ‘competing narratives’ come undone. Last month, I gave a lecture in Toronto to mark the 95th anniversary of the 1915 Armenian genocide, the deliberate mass murder of one and a half million Armenian Christians by the Ottoman Turkish army and militia. Before my talk, I was interviewed on Canadian Television, CTV, which also owns the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper. And from the start, I could see that the interviewer had a problem. Canada has a large Armenian community. But Toronto also has a large Turkish community. And the Turks, as the Globe and Mail always tell us, “hotly dispute” that this was a genocide. So the interviewer called the genocide “deadly massacres”.
Of course, I spotted her specific problem straight away. She could not call the massacres a ‘genocide’, because the Turkish community would be outraged. But equally, she sensed that ‘massacres’ on its own – especially with the gruesome studio background photographs of dead Armenians – was not quite up to defining a million and a half murdered human beings. Hence the ‘deadly massacres’. How odd!!! If there are ‘deadly’ massacres, are there some massacres which are not ‘deadly’, from which the victims walk away alive? It was a ludicrous tautology.
In the end, I told this little tale of journalistic cowardice to my Armenian audience, among whom were sitting CTV executives. Within an hour of my ending, my Armenian host received an SMS about me from a CTV reporter. “Shitting on CTV was way out of line,” the reporter complained. I doubted, personally, if the word ‘shitting’ would find its way onto CTV. But then, neither does ‘genocide’. I’m afraid ‘competing narratives’ had just exploded.
Yet the use of the language of power – of its beacon-words and its beacon-phrases -goes on among us still. How many times have I heard western reporters talking about ‘foreign fighters’ in Afghanistan? They are referring, of course, to the various Arab groups supposedly helping the Taliban. We heard the same story from Iraq. Saudis, Jordanians, Palestinian, Chechen fighters, of course. The generals called them ‘foreign fighters’. And then immediately we western reporters did the same. Calling them ‘foreign fighters’ meant they were an invading force. But not once – ever – have I heard a mainstream western television station refer to the fact that there are at least 150,000 ‘foreign fighters’ in Afghanistan. And that most of them, ladies and gentlemen, are in American or other Nato uniforms!
Similarly, the pernicious phrase ‘Af-Pak’ – as racist as it is politically dishonest – is now used by reporters when it originally was a creation of the US state department, on the day that Richard Holbrooke was appointed special US representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. But the phrase avoided the use of the word ‘India’ whose influence in Afghanistan and whose presence in Afghanistan, is a vital part of the story. Furthermore, ‘Af-Pak’ – by deleting India – effectively deleted the whole Kashmir crisis from the conflict in south-east Asia. It thus deprived Pakistan of any say in US local policy on Kashmir – after all, Holbrooke was made the ‘Af-Pak’ envoy, specifically forbidden from discussing Kashmir. Thus the phrase ‘Af-Pak’, which totally deletes the tragedy of Kashmir – too many ‘competing narratives’, perhaps? – means that when we journalists use the same phrase, ‘Af-Pak’, which was surely created for us journalists, we are doing the state department’s work.
Now let’s look at history. Our leaders love history. Most of all, they love the Second World War. In 2003, George W. Bush thought he was Churchill as well as George W. Bush. True, Bush had spent the Vietnam war protecting the skies of Texas from the Vietcong. But now, in 2003, he was standing up to the ‘appeasers’ who did not want a war with Saddam who was, of course, ‘the Hitler of the Tigris’. The appeasers were the British who did not want to fight Nazi Germany in 1938. Blair, of course, also tried on Churchill’s waistcoat and jacket for size. No ‘appeaser’ he. America was Britain’s oldest ally, he proclaimed – and both Bush and Blair reminded journalists that the US had stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Britain in her hour of need in 1940.
But none of this was true.
Britain’s old ally was not the United States. It was Portugal, a neutral fascist state during World War Two. Only my own newspaper, The Independent, picked this up.
Nor did America fight alongside Britain in her hour of need in 1940, when Hitler threatened invasion and the German air force blitzed London. No, in 1940 America was enjoying a very profitable period of neutrality – and did not join Britain in the war until Japan attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbour in December of 1941.
Ouch!
Back in 1956, I read the other day, Eden called Nasser the ‘Mussolini of the Nile’. A bad mistake. Nasser was loved by the Arabs, not hated as Mussolini was by the majority of Africans, especially the Arab Libyans. The Mussolini parallel was not challenged or questioned by the British press. And we all know what happened at Suez in 1956.
Yes, when it comes to history, we journalists really do let the presidents and prime ministers take us for a ride.
Today, as foreigners try to take food and fuel by sea to the hungry Palestinians of Gaza, we journalists should be reminding our viewers and listeners of a long-ago day when America and Britain went to the aid of a surrounded people, bringing food and fuel – our own servicemen dying as they did so – to help a starving population. That population had been surrounded by a fence erected by a brutal army which wished to starve the people into submission. The army was Russian. The city was Berlin. The wall was to come later. The people had been our enemies only three years earlier. Yet we flew the Berlin airlift to save them. Now look at Gaza today. Which western journalist – and we love historical parallels – has even mentioned 1948 Berlin in the context of Gaza?
Look at more recent times. Saddam had ‘weapons of mass destruction’ – you can fit ‘WMD’ into a headline – but of course, he didn’t, and the American press went through embarrassing bouts of self-condemnation afterwards. How could it have been so misled, the New York Times asked itself? It had not, the paper concluded, challenged the Bush administration enough.
And now the very same paper is softly – very softly – banging the drums for war in Iran. Iran is working on WMD. And after the war, if there is a war, more self-condemnation, no doubt, if there are no nuclear weapons projects.
Yet the most dangerous side of our new semantic war, our use of the words of power – though it is not a war since we have largely surrendered – is that it isolates us from our viewers and readers. They are not stupid. They understand words, in many cases – I fear – better than we do. History, too. They know that we are drowning our vocabulary with the language of generals and presidents, from the so-called elites, from the arrogance of the Brookings Institute experts, or those of those of the Rand Corporation or what I call the ‘THINK TANKS’. Thus we have become part of this language.
Here, for example, are some of the danger words:
· POWER PLAYERS
· ACTIVISM
· NON-STATE ACTORS
· KEY PLAYERS
· GEOSTRATEGIC PLAYERS
· NARRATIVES
· EXTERNAL PLAYERS
· PEACE PROCESS
· MEANINGFUL SOLUTIONS
· AF-PAK
· CHANGE AGENTS (whatever these sinister creatures are).
I am not a regular critic of Al Jazeera. It gives me the freedom to speak on air. Only a few years ago, when Wadah Khanfar (now Director General of Al Jazeera) was Al Jazeera’s man in Baghdad, the US military began a slanderous campaign against Wadah’s bureau, claiming – untruthfully – that Al Jazeera was in league with al-Qaeda because they were receiving videotapes of attacks on US forces. I went to Fallujah to check this out. Wadah was 100 per cent correct. Al-Qaeda was handing in their ambush footage without any warning, pushing it through office letter-boxes. The Americans were lying.
Wadah is, of course, wondering what is coming next.
Well, I have to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that all those ‘danger words’ I have just read out to you – from KEY PLAYERS to NARRATIVES to PEACE PROCESS to AF-PAK – all occur in the nine-page Al Jazeera programme for this very forum.
I’m not condemning Al Jazeera for this, ladies and gentlemen. Because this vocabulary is not adopted through political connivance. It is an infection that we all suffer from – I’ve used ‘peace process’ a few times myself, though with quotation marks which you can’t use on television – but yes, it’s a contagion.
And when we use these words, we become one with the power and the elites which rule our world without fear of challenge from the media. Al Jazeera has done more than any television network I know to challenge authority, both in the Middle East and in the West. (And I am not using ‘challenge’ in the sense of ‘problem’, as in ‘”I face many challenges,” says General McCrystal.’)
How do we escape this disease? Watch out for the spell-checkers in our lap-tops, the sub-editor’s dreams of one-syllable words, stop using Wikipedia. And read books – real books, with paper pages, which means deep reading. History books, especially.
Al Jazeera is giving good coverage to the flotilla – the convoy of boats setting off for Gaza. I don’t think they are a bunch of anti-Israelis. I think the international convoy is on its way because people aboard these ships – from all over the world – are trying to do what our supposedly humanitarian leaders have failed to do. They are bringing food and fuel and hospital equipment to those who suffer. In any other context, the Obamas and the Sarkozys and the Camerons would be competing to land US Marines and the Royal Navy and French forces with humanitarian aid – as Clinton did in Somalia. Didn’t the God-like Blair believe in humanitarian ‘intervention’ in Kosovo and Sierra Leone?
In normal circumstances, Blair might even have put a foot over the border.
But no. We dare not offend the Israelis. And so ordinary people are trying to do what their leaders have culpably failed to do. Their leaders have failed them.
Have the media? Are we showing documentary footage of the Berlin airlift today? Or of Clinton’s attempt to rescue the starving people of Somalia, of Blair’s humanitarian ‘intervention’ in the Balkans, just to remind our viewers and readers – and the people on those boats – that this is about hypocrisy on a massive scale?
The hell we are! We prefer ‘competing narratives’. Few politicians want the Gaza voyage to reach its destination – be its end successful, farcical or tragic. We believe in the ‘peace process’, the ‘road map’. Keep the ‘fence’ around the Palestinians. Let the ‘key players’ sort it out.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am not your ‘key speaker’ this morning.
I am your guest, and I thank you for your patience in listening to me.
What this Freedom Flotilla has over previous relief efforts like the Viva Palestina caravans is a momentum building in the international press. It’s the big ship effect that works for gunship diplomacy, brought to bear this time to enforce social justice, too big to ignore.
(Update 5/24: Australia’s Sidney Morning Herald has three articles: 1. the Turkish sendoff 2. Elvis Costello honoring the BDS cultural boycott, and 3. an in-depth story featuring the trademarked media logo BUSTING THE BLOCKADE!)
Admittedly America’s is a Zionist media. That’s where I suppose the social media campaign must wag the Zionist dog, to mix pun with metaphor. It’s going to help no doubt that the Israeli press is already awash with anticipation.
Where the last Viva Palestina humanitarian convoy crossed continents before the BBC begrudged it coverage, the 2010 Freedom Flotilla, including ShiptoGaza and the Free Gaza Movement have already hit BBC radar. The IHH efforts are being joined by a cargo ship which just left Algiers.
Here are the latest photos from Turkey, a Convoy to Gaza blog being updated by UK activist Lorbital, and Tox’s notes about DAY ONE of relief convoy, day 1075 of Gaza Siege.
With Israel vowing to stop them, and the Freedom Flotilla determined to push through, the showdown will have Western media outlets unable to maintain their news blackout. This will be no USS Liberty pummeled by sneak attack with no witnesses permitted to break the story. The Gaza relief convoy numbers nine ships, with more adventurers joining the escort no doubt, a measure of supporters’ anticipation of an inevitable catharsis for the siege.
The inertia looks good to me. Press releases are flying announcing who’s joining the convoy (now a USS Liberty survivor), and European diplomats are issuing statements that they expect Israel to give the convoy safe passage. Wait until the ships are making the final crossing from Cyprus for heavyweight supporters such as George Galloway or Hugo Chavez to weigh in.
The Israeli press is already running circles. A fleet of Israeli sailboats from the Herziliya Marina is preparing to greet the relief convoy with banners that say HAMAS SUCKS to counter whatever humanitarian message they worry the “peace activists” might score. There’s some speculation that Israel would fare better PR by letting the aid through.
A fortuitous coincidence places White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in Israel when the blockade-runners are due to arrive. By Israel, I actually mean the Occupied Territories. Emanuel was trying to book the Western Wall for his son’s barmitzvah. Plans were changed due either to threats from the ultra-right because of US criticisms of continuing settlement building, or because US officials are prohibited from conducting personal business outside of Israel’s Green Line.
The cargo ship which sailed from Algeria today is the al-Jazair. More info on this ship as we find it.
ShiptoGaza Sweden has uploaded more pictures of the loading of the charming Sofia in Athens.
Turkey’s third convoy vessel has been identified as the massive cargo ship Defne Y (IMO: 7725518), loading in Istanbul and due to join the Gazze and Mavi Marmara in Cyprus.
UPDATE: Live feed of convoy arrival will be streamed by al-Quds TV.
The Viva Palestina aid convoy has been wending its way toward Gaza having left Britain 31 days ago. Now the 200 vehicles are just 40 miles from their destination, and still no coverage in the US media. Last night the 550 convoyers were blocked in the port of El-Arish by Egyptian riot police while interlopers were set upon the nonviolent activists with woodplanks and stones. Those participants who didn’t lose their phones were tweeting for supporters to call their Egyptian embassies, still no word in the US. Google it any way you like, it’s a black out.
This is the third VIVA PALESTINA aid convoy to Gaza. You can find after-the-fact articles about the July 2009 effort mounted by US activists, but nothing current in the mainstream press. Why would America’s compassion for the besieged Gazans not be reflected by its media?
Accounts of the attack are circulating through alternative channels, but nothing’s hit the mainstream.
Among the international agencies, the BBC has kept its reporting limited, but yesterday’s violence broke through. There is active TV coverage in Turkey and Iran, and transnational news agencies
Like Sky News, Al Jazeera, and Ynet, are covering the story. Still NOT ONE report in the US media, what Noam Chomsky confirmed as a media blackout.
Example: The UK Press Association lists one story, Gaza aid Brits ‘beaten by police’, where the headline infers an unverified accusation, and still no mention made of “Viva Palestina” in entire text.
Any ideas about how to break through? There are US participants with the convoy, and the contingent is still not out of danger. Is there anything the American public can do, by way of contacting the State Department to call off its dogs in Egypt, or to expose the billions in aid to Israel and Egypt, the first and second highest recipients of US foreign aid, most assuredly behind the Egyptian making obstacles for the aid convoy, part of its maintaining the siege on Gaza?
The convoy had to wait for those injured last night to return from the hospital, and for those detained to be returned. As a result, the vehicles have now set off from Al-Ashir at sundown, to travel in darkness to the Gaza border crossing at Rafah. Egyptian authorities had been trying to force the convoy to proceed at night to minimize its exposure to the local populations. The police barricades surrounding Viva Palestina, like the Gaza Freedom March in Cairo, were less to contain the activists than about prohibiting Egyptians from joining in.
Meanwhile, hearing of the attack on the aid convoy, Gazans waiting at the border began to riot. There are reports now one Egyptian soldier dead, 35 Palestinians injured, five of them brain dead. But where are you going to hear about it?
For Americans who think they’re being kept informed, that’s the story.
Video footage has reached Turkish TV of last night’s attack on Viva Palestina as the convoyers waited to proceed in El-Arish. Videos show activists with head injuries, some having to be carried off. There were reported windows broken on the convoy vehicles. What a travesty if the aid to be delivered to Gaza will arrive in shambles, courtesy of the Egyptians. We won’t know until sunup. Finally the BBC has reported the story, but not what really happened.
The BBC reports, like ABC Australia, that water canon were turned on Viva Palestina because they refused to comply with Egyptian demands. But witnesses tell of a different progression.
(UPDATE: The UK Press Association lists one story, Gaza aid Brits ‘beaten by police’, where the headline infers an unverified accusation, and still no mention made of “Viva Palestina” in entire text.)
The Irish 4 Palestine blog is maintained based on regular phone and text updates from “their boys” in the convoy. In the thick of the ugliness last night, communications ceased. Then strange voices answered the phones, which had been found dropped on the ground. Finally one phone was answered by an English-speaking woman named Pat who described the attack:
“…the whole thing happened when convoy members were still locked inside this gated compound, then suddenly a very large group of plain clothes “people” arrived at the compound with sticks and stones, they were then allowed into the compound by the Egyptians and began attacking the convoy members trapped inside with nowhere to go. The Egyptians then joined in the attack when the plain clothes vigilantes arrived and went inside to attack.”
Her account was corroborated by ensuing witnesses. What may have motivated the vigilantes is open to conjecture, because we’re led to believe the aid convoy usually met a warm welcome throughout the region.
Malaysian activist Juana Jaafar was providing live play by play and occasional pics throughout the night. Her observations early on may offer one angle:
The gates have been blocked by authorities’ cars and hundreds of riot police waiting outside! Members are getting anxious
Riot cops! And a water cannon truck just arrived. Dejavu ke? Okay damn, a water tank size of 16 wheel petroleum carrier just arrived.
Members sitting at gates … I don’t understand Arabic but I know stuff being said bout “Yahudi” and am feeling uncomfortable. There are Jews in and supporting our mission …
Shit la the jangguts nak tunjuk hero pulak. Bangang ah!
Anti-Semitism is a subject no one wants to mention in polite company, perhaps because it the accusation is so frequently invoked by Israel. In accounts of peace activism in the Middle East, frequently however we read reports of Arab bystanders showing solidarity with peace actions, but declining to join in if there happen to be Jewish activists among the organizers, regardless the cause, even the anti-Zionist ones.
In this case, were the Egyptian police trying to play up the presence of Jewish activists in order to motive the plain-cloths agitators among them to throw stones?
The longer (abridged) sequence of Tweets from Juana Jaafar recounts the night’s adventure.
8PM
Yay! All members are together now as last batch rolls in! We going by the minute now. Autho may impose all sorts on new rules on us like drive in the mid of night so public can’t see us; no fanfare. Some say they may not let all vehicles out so looks like convoy is small.But rumor has it there’s pizza in the Welsh caravan so am gonna head there :]
The gates have been blocked by autho cars and hundreds of riot police waiting outside! Members are getting anxious
Riot cops! And a water cannon truck just arrived. Dejavu ke?
Okay damn, a water tank size of 16 wheel petroleum carrier just arrived.
9PM
Members sitting at gates. Someone leading a doa. Doa man crying while doa. I don’t understand Arabic but I know stuff being said bout “Yahudi” and am feeling uncomfortable. There are Jews in and supporting our mission …Shit la the jangguts nak tunjuk hero pulak. Bangang ah!
Standoff with autho in El-Arish port
We have been told there are protests going on right now in Istanbul, London, Chicago and at Egyptian ambassies elsewhere
11PM
All hell has broken lose at the port. Shit flying around and police spraying and gassing. We’re in the gates12PM
Instigators started moving in from within the police lines and moved on the inside of the police side of the barricades. Convoy members were sitting on the ground when shouts from police lines started and then wham, hell. Just helped bandage a friend’s headSome people are missing including a Malaysian student who came on his own from the UK. We are trying to find him. He may be arrested
Wisma, a Malaysian student has been detained by Egypt police in El-Arish. Please help.
Calm now. Galloway speaking to us, explicitly named Egyptian regime as instigator of violence. Said now the world can see who is responsible for Gaza siege. We have bend over backwards to come to El-Arish cause Egypt said we’d be welcomed here, instead welcomed with violence.
Galloway says Viva has video taken from meeting room to show special police starting violence. Police then threw stones at meeting room
1AM
Arrested are from Great Britain, USA, Malaysia and Kuwaiti.One person just got rolled out on a stretcher.
2AM
Things are quiet now. Injured are reluctant to be taken to hospital unless Galloway guarantees Egyptian authorities gives safe passage.4AM
It’s 415am here. We been camping in our vehicles. Some took refuge in the mosque. Riot police still outside gate + 3 water cannon trucksCalm now but the mood is shit. Some members also not happy how few others reacted to Egyptian provocation saying we have driven this far in peace.
We’re okay, safe. But freezing. Hope things look better in morn
5AM
For the record: Malaysian boy detained only taking pix at the gates, not involved any other way. Our group mate from Great Britain detained was also just filming
After endless impediment, not the least of which was a sudden Israeli naval exercise to block its path, the Viva Palestina aid convoy appears finally about to reach Gaza. Permission to enter has been granted, although last week Egypt reneged on the okay it had given to the 1,400 strong Gaza Freedom March. NPR had a reporter at the Rafah border crossing, but didn’t mention the aid convoy until 1/3 into the report, and then not by name, and never mentioned the New Year’s Eve march at all. As well, NPR referred to the besieged prison state as an “enclave” whose borders were forcibly closed, “understandably,” when Hamas “took over.”
Here’s the opening of this morning’s report. My favorite part? Two. First the interminable sportscast-lke intro, a beautiful day in Fenway Park, etc. Then, hesitation as the reporter explains that the border is opened to let Palestinians out, and um, sometimes back in.
Steve Inskeep: “This is a rare day in a Palestinian enclave known as the Gaza Strip. A border crossing opened today, which is rare because Gaza is surrounded by Israel and Egypt and both have kept the crossings closed for weeks at a time over the last couple years. Today people and supplies have been allowed to move and NPR’s Peter Kenyon is at the border crossing of Rafah on the Egyptian side, Hi Peter.”
Peter Kenyon: “Hi Steve, how are you?”
SI: “Okay thanks. What have you seen?”
PK: “Well it’s a beautiful sunny day here, a little bit windy but a bright blue sky, and I’m at the actual crossing point. The black iron gates are slowly swinging open and closed from time to time, letting Palestinians out into Egypt or uh, sometimes back in, people who need to get home. Now this is a very limited opening, not any kind of a max exodus.”
SI: “Is this an opportunity to move supplies in addition to people?”
PK: “It is. In fact there is an aid convoy that has endured quite a few setbacks that has now finally arrived in the port of El-Arish. That’s about twenty-five miles away and that is expected to come as early as today, possibly tonight, there’s some last minute logistical difficulties. It’s a British convoy led by the outspoken member of parliament George Galloway. And they have finally arrived and they do hope to get in.”
And that’s the extent of the coverage of the aid convoy that has been winding its way toward Gaza for the last month. No mention of “Viva Palestina” or organizations behind the effort, or even what their difficulties have been. The final “logistical difficulties” to which the reporter alludes concern Egypt’s sudden stipulation that aid consist only of medical supplies. Check with York to Gaza, the Reading Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, the Sitch, among others, for the final updates.
Meanwhile the BBC has pictures of conditions in Gaza.
While the Gaza Freedom March was kept contained in Cairo, Egypt was simultaneously stopping the Viva Palestina aid convoy from entering through Aqaba. Ultimately the convoy was forced to circle Israel and return to Syria, where it had to ferry its vehicles on the Ulusoy-6 from Lattakia to the Egyptian Port of El-Arish to reach the Rafah border crossing into Gaza.
The phrase is oft quoted, but no one knows who originated it –or, even if it’s true. It could just be an old pharah’s wives tale. But Obama buys it: from the people who brought you hope.gov we’ve now come to ready.gov. Where the White House assures you there is no need to fear coming plagues and pestilence so long as you “Prepare. Plan. Stay Informed.” and be sure to have food for three days.
Is it three meals or nine? Is the consequence anarchy or revolution? The “truism” is commonly sited as being an old Russian expression, but it’s so pithy, others guess it has a literary source like Dumas. A contemporary scholar placed it back much further:
The Romans believed that civilization is never more than three meals away from anarchy.
Of course, when Stalin or Trotsky are thought to have said it, the dire consequence for civilization is revolution. Which is where the saying catches the popular imagination. Internet sleuths are eager to credit the wisdom to a BBC situation comedy. “[Arnold] Rimmer said it in Red Dwarf.” Although two decades before, Science Fiction authors Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle wrote in Lucifer’s Hammer, that civilization is “only three meals removed from savagery.”
Doubtless in earlier times, you ate well if you could rely on one solid meal every day, which no doubt holds true for the majority of the world still. In the developed nations of course, we cannot see ourselves subsisting on less than three.
The makers of the documentary King Corn interviewed Senator Chuck Grassley about America’s food supply, which is where the expression piqued my interest. Grassley explained: “A society is always nine meals away from a revolution. If you have people going without food for three days and there are enough of them out there, they will revolt.”
Like the “300 pound gorilla” which has now become 900lbs, the units have indexed with man’s inflated prosperity, likewise the vicarious sense that salvation from inequity might come by revolution. A better educated Briton is thought to have coined the nine meals abstraction. At the height of last year’s food crisis, it was recalled that Lord Cameron of Dillington, in his capacity of head of the UK’s Countryside Agency, coined version 2.0 “nine meals from anarchy.”
The distinction between anarchy and revolution was noted by Fredick Upham Adams in 1896, unearthed by Wikiquotes, who speculated on the veracity of the concept:
…I realize that the spirit of liberty does not exist in hungry men. People talked about a day coming when the people would become so hungry and desperate that they would rise in a revolution and sweep all before them. Such a day will never come. Hungry men may fight, but it will be for a bone—not for liberty. The perpetuity of liberty rests with those who eat three square meals a day.
Of course, Maslow would later quantify this with his hierarchy of needs, but I think modern man clings to the revolutionary idyll over anarchy because it gives him imaginary elbow room to believe right could prevail over the totalitarian misrule of the state. For the common man, it grants him reprieve from the likelihood that Orwell was correct to imagine that the future of mankind will be a soldier’s foot on your face forever. For the affluent, thoughts of a revolutionary cleansing assuage their guilt.
But Obama’s crew appears to be taking no chances. They’ve unveiled a website at www.ready.gov which expands on George W. Bush’s plastic and duct tape. Actually, the plastic and duct tape are still there, but at the top Obama wants us to be sure to get our three squares, for three days.
Ready
Prepare. Plan. Stay Informed.EMERGENCY SUPPLY LIST
Recommended Items to Include in a Basic Emergency Supply Kit:
– Water, one gallon of water per person per day for at least three days, for drinking and sanitation
– Food, at least a three-day supply of non-perishable food
– Battery-powered or hand crank radio and a NOAA Weather Radio with tone alert and extra batteries for both
– Flashlight and extra batteries
– First aid kit
– Whistle to signal for help
– Dust mask, to help filter contaminated air and plastic sheeting and duct tape to shelter-in-place
– Moist towelettes, garbage bags and plastic ties for personal sanitation
– Wrench or pliers to turn off utilities
– Can opener for food (if kit contains canned food)
– Local maps
– Cell phone with chargers
Additional Items to Consider Adding to an Emergency Supply Kit:
– Prescription medications and glasses
– Infant formula and diapers
– Pet food and extra water for your pet
– Important family documents such as copies of insurance policies, identification and bank account records in a waterproof, portable container
– Cash or traveler’s checks and change
– Emergency reference material such as a first aid book or information from http://www.ready.gov
– Sleeping bag or warm blanket for each person. Consider additional bedding if you live in a cold-weather climate.
– Complete change of clothing including a long sleeved shirt, long pants and sturdy shoes. Consider additional clothing if you live in a cold-weather climate.
– Household chlorine bleach and medicine dropper – When diluted nine parts water to one part bleach, bleach can be used as a disinfectant. Or in an emergency, you can use it to treat water by using 16 drops of regular household liquid bleach per gallon of water. Do not use scented, color safe or bleaches with added cleaners.
– Fire Extinguisher
– Matches in a waterproof container
– Feminine supplies and personal hygiene items
– Mess kits, paper cups, plates and plastic utensils, paper towels
– Paper and pencil
– Books, games, puzzles or other activities for childrenThrough its Ready Campaign, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security educates and empowers Americans to take some simple steps to prepare for and respond to potential emergencies, including natural disasters and terrorist attacks. Ready asks individuals to do three key things: get an emergency supply kit, make a family emergency plan, and be informed about the different types of emergencies that could occur and their appropriate responses.
All Americans should have some basic supplies on hand in order to survive for at least three days if an emergency occurs. Following is a listing of some basic items that every emergency supply kit should include. However, it is important that individuals review this list and consider where they live and the unique needs of their family in order to create an emergency supply kit that will meet these needs. Individuals should also consider having at least two emergency supply kits, one full kit at home and smaller portable kits in their workplace, vehicle or other places they spend time.
At what line in the sand will we be able to say for certain that President Obama’s hope bubble is a bust? Half of you are laughing at my naivety, the others are hushing me with your fingers crossed. Will it take a nuclear attack on Iran? More bailout? Less health? For example, when will we know whether Obama will be more a Kissinger Peace Laureate than a Mandela? A decision on Afghanistan? We have it already.
The BBC is reporting that as the US thanked Britain for recommitting forces to NATO in Afghanistan, it assured its British allies that Obama would soon be substantially increasing our own military forces. The announcement is to be made next week, the surge, 45,000 more soldiers. The White House emphatically denies this story, stating that President Obama “had not yet made a decision on troop numbers” and “would make up his mind in the coming weeks.”
And there’s your answer. And we’ve had it for awhile.
I’ll bet as a supporter of Barack Obama, you had made up your mind on Iraq and Afghanistan before you elected the hope candidate. You probably based your support for Senator Obama on the intuition that a young man smart as that had already made up his mind too, certainly on the moral issues.
What does it mean now, that Obama might be still thinking on it?
If Obama had made up his mind, or has, he’s struggling now to make up his mind about how to tell you.
Withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan is not ethically complicated. Financially it’s a tough move because you’ve got all those war contractor profiteers who’ve got to be weened cautiously. But there is no intermediary way. So long as the US retains authority, it’s an occupation. So long as one US company is collecting reconstruction funds, the US is serving its own interests. Rationalizations to remain as peacekeepers are just excuses to keep our hand in the till. There is no peacekeeping role for the US. We must get out, and proffer gobs of restitution.
You know who should get the Nobel Peace Prize? The Nobel committee. For their valiant hopeful effort, at the risk of looking foolish. They merit at least a nomination for Time Magazine Persons Of The Year.
It’s damning photograph. I sought it out after hearing the story of the two Norwegian mercenaries condemned to death in the Congo for the murder of their Congolese driver. Was their black companion killed in an attempt to rob the white adventurers, as they tell it? US news outlets asked Tjostolv Moland’s mothers about the picture of her son, which showed him smiling as he wiped blood from the driver’s seat of their pickup. The mother dismissed it as bad timing, she though her son was probably caught off guard, laughing at a joke unrelated to his morbid task. Boy can Americans relate.
Other US newspapers speculated about a fabled Norwegian propensity to laugh at adversity. They also described Norwegian diplomats scrambling to save the two boys from the gallows. It’s true that Norway doesn’t have a death sentence, and therefore does not condone it elsewhere. Otherwise US and BBC portrayal of Norwegian concern for the two mercenaries seemed at odds with Norway’s usual determined pacifism, so I was eager to hear from my relatives there.
The scoop? Contrary to US and UK sentiments and their projection of Norwegian concerns, there is no domestic sympathy for the two wayward boys. None.
The Norwegian public has become well aware that Moland and partner Joshua French have been traveling the Congo as mercenaries, and have been involved in other killings as well. The fact that Congolese courts are trying to extort a large fine from the Norwegian government, based on the accusation of the two travelers being agents of Norway, is due to documents which the two forged to pretend they had active duty contact with the Norwegian military.
In Norway, military service is compulsory. Every Norwegian male has a record of military service. It helps that Norway rarely involves itself with acts of aggression, sanctioned by a fraternity of nations or not. And when soldiers of fortune like Moland and French set about rampaging in Africa, it behooves Norwegian authorities to ensure that their military is not implicated by association.
How fitting that US and UK listeners should presume a reflexive maternal instinct to protect the two white boys, set upon by angry African opportunists. The boys might be mercenaries, but America and Britain have lots of those overseas. Hired guns, paid assassins, professional killers, why quibble with words?
The laws of war grant little grace for mercenaries, but that’s not what English-speaking supporters of imperial expansion want to believe. Mercenaries in the Neocon vernacular are called private contractors. They’re just ordinary soldiers who’ve escaped the poor pay of military service, to the entrepreneurial ranks of war-making free enterprise.
The Rock Creek Free Press is available online, but if you want it in print, the DC monthly is available in Colorado Springs at the Bookman, 3163 W. Colorado. The September issue features a speech given by legendary Australian journalist John Pilger on July 4th in San Francisco.
Here’s the RCFP transcript:
Two years ago I spoke at “Socialism in Chicago” about an invisible government which is a term used by Edward Bernays, one the founders of modern propaganda. It was Bernays, who in the 1920s invented public relations as a euphemism for propaganda. And it was Bernays, deploying the ideas of his uncle Sigmund Freud, who campaigned on behalf of the tobacco industry for women to take up smoking as an act of feminist liberation calling cigarettes “tortures of freedom”. At the same time he was involved in the disinformation which was critical in overthrowing the Arbenz government in Guatemala. So you have the association of cigarettes and regime change. The invisible government that Bernays had in mind brought together all media: PR, the press, broadcasting, advertising and their power of branding and image making. In other words, disinformation.
And I suppose I would like to talk today about this invisible government’s most recent achievement, the rise of Barrack Obama and the silencing of much of the left. But all of this has a history, of course and I’d like to go back, take you back some forty years to a sultry and, for me, very memorable day in Viet Nam.
I was a young war correspondent who had just arrived in a village in the Central Highlands called Tuylon. My assignment was to write about a unit of US Marines who had been sent to the village to win hearts and minds. “My orders,” said the Marine Sergeant, “are to sell the American way of liberty, as stated in the Pacification Handbook, this is designed to win the hearts and minds of folks as stated on page 86.” Now, page 86 was headed in capital letters: WHAM (winning hearts and minds). The Marine Unit was a combined action company which explained the Sergeant, meant, “We attack these folks on Mondays and we win their hearts and minds on Tuesdays.” He was joking, of course, but not quite.
The Sergeant, who didn’t speak Vietnamese, had arrived in the village, stood up on a Jeep and said through a bullhorn: “Come on out everybody we’ve got rice and candies and toothbrushes to give you.” This was greeted by silence. “Now listen, either you gooks come on out or we’re going to come right in there and get you!” Now the people of Tuylon finally came out and they stood in line to receive packets of Uncle Ben’s Miracle Rice, Hershey Bars, party balloons, and several thousand toothbrushes. Three portable, battery operated, yellow, flush lavatories were held back for the arrival of the colonel.
And when the colonel arrived that evening, the district chief was summoned and the yellow, flush lavatories unveiled. The colonel cleared his throat and took out a handwritten speech,
“Mr. District Chief and all you nice people,” said the colonel, “what these gifts represent is more than the sum of their parts, they carry the spirit of America. Ladies and gentlemen there’s no place on Earth like America, it’s the land where miracles happen, it’s a guiding light for me and for you. In America, you see, we count ourselves as real lucky as having the greatest democracy the world has ever known and we want you nice people to share in our good fortune.”
Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, even John Winthrope sitting upon a hill got a mention. All that was missing was the Star Bangled Banner playing softly in the background. Of course the villagers had no idea what the colonel was talking about, but when the Marines clapped, they clapped. And when the colonel waved, the children waved. And when he departed the colonel shook the Sergeant’s hand and said: “We’ve got plenty of hearts and minds here, carry on Sergeant.” “Yes Sir.” In Viet Nam I witnessed many scenes like that.
I’d grown up in faraway Australia on a cinematic diet of John Wayne, Randolph Scott, Walt Disney, and Ronald Reagan. The American way of liberty they portrayed might well have been lifted from the WHAM handbook. I’d learned that the United States had won World War II on its own and now led the free world as the chosen society. It was only later when I read Walter Lippmann’s book, Public Opinion, a manual of the invisible government, that I began to understand the power of emotions attached to false ideas and bad histories on a grand scale.
Now, historians call this exceptionalism, the notion that the United States has a divine right to bring what it calls “liberty” to the rest of humanity. Of course this is a very old refrain. The French and British created and celebrated their own civilizing missions while imposing colonial regimes that denied basic civil liberties. However, the power of the American message was, and remains, different. Whereas the Europeans were proud imperialists, Americans are trained to deny their imperialism. As Mexico was conquered and the Marines sent to Nicaragua, American textbooks referred to an Age of Innocence. American motives were always well meaning, moral, exceptional, as the colonel said, “There was no ideology” and that’s still the case.
Americanism is an ideology that is unique because its main feature is its denial that it is an ideology. It’s both conservative and it’s liberal. And it’s right and it’s left. And Barack Obama is its embodiment. Since Obama was elected leading liberals have talked about America returning to its true status as, “a nation of moral ideals”. Those are the words of Paul Krugman, the liberal columnist of The New York Times. In the San Francisco Chronicle, columnist Mark Morford wrote,
“Spiritually advanced people regard the new president as a light worker who can help usher in a new way of being on the planet.”
Tell that to an Afghan child whose family has been blown away by Obama’s bombs. Or a Pakistani child whose house has been visited by one of Obama’s drones. Or a Palestinian child surveying the carnage in Gaza caused by American “smart” weapons, which, disclosed Seymour Hersh, were re-supplied to Israel for use in the slaughter, and I quote; “Only after the Obama team let if be known, it would not object.” The man who stayed silent on Gaza is the man who now condemns Iran.
In a sense, Obama is the myth that is America’s last taboo. His most consistent theme was never “change”, it was power. “The United States,” he said, “leads the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good. We must lead by building a 21st century military to ensure the security of our people and advance the security of all people.” And there is this remarkable statement, “At moments of great peril in the past century our leaders ensured that America, by deed and by example, led and lifted the world; that we stood and fought for the freedoms sought by billions of people beyond our borders.” Words like these remind me of the colonel in the village in Viet Nam, as he spun much the same nonsense.
Since 1945, by deed and by example, to use Obama’s words, America has overthrown 50 governments, including democracies, and crushed some 30 liberation movements and bombed countless men, women, and children to death. I’m grateful to Bill Blum for his cataloging of that. And yet, here is the 45th (sic) president of the United States having stacked his government with war mongers and corporate fraudsters and polluters from the Bush and Clinton eras, promising, not only more of the same, but a whole new war in Pakistan. Justified by the murderous clichés of Hilary Clinton, clichés like, “high value targets”. Within three days of his inauguration, Obama was ordering the death of people in faraway countries: Pakistan and Afghanistan. And yet, the peace movement, it seems, is prepared to look the other way and believe that the cool Obama will restore, as Krugman wrote, “the nation of moral ideals.”
Not long ago, I visited the American Museum of History in the celebrated Smithsonian Institute in Washington. One of the most popular exhibitions was called “The Price of Freedom: Americans at War”. It was holiday time and lines of happy people, including many children, shuffled through a Santa’s grotto of war and conquest. When messages about their nation’s great mission were lit up; these included tributes to the; “…exceptional Americans who saved a million lives…” in Viet Nam; where they were, “…determined to stop Communist expansion.” In Iraq other brave Americans, “employed air-strikes of unprecedented precision.” What was shocking was not so much the revisionism of two of the epic crimes of modern times, but the shear scale of omission.
Like all US presidents, Bush and Obama have very much in common. The wars of both presidents and the wars of Clinton and Reagan, Carter and Ford, Nixon and Kennedy are justified by the enduring myth of exceptional America. A myth the late Harold Pinter described as, “a brilliant, witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”
The clever young man who recently made it to the White House is a very fine hypnotist; partly because it is indeed extraordinary to see an African American at the pinnacle of power in the land of slavery. However, this is the 21st century and race together with gender, and even class, can be very seductive tools of propaganda. For what is so often overlooked and what matters, I believe above all, is the class one serves. George Bush’s inner circle from the State Department to the Supreme Court was perhaps the most multi-racial in presidential history. It was PC par excellence. Think Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell. It was also the most reactionary. Obama’s very presence in the White House appears to reaffirm the moral nation. He’s a marketing dream. But like Calvin Klein or Benetton, he’s a brand that promises something special, something exciting, almost risqué. As if he might be radical. As if he might enact change. He makes people feel good; he’s a post-modern man with no political baggage. And all that’s fake.
In his book, Dreams From My Father, Obama refers to the job he took after he graduated from Columbia in 1983; he describes his employer as, “…a consulting house to multi-national corporations.” For some reason he doesn’t say who his employer was or what he did there. The employer was Business International Corporation; which has a long history of providing cover for the CIA with covert action and infiltrating unions from the left. I know this because it was especially active in my own country, Australia. Obama doesn’t say what he did at Business International and they may be absolutely nothing sinister. But it seems worthy of inquiry, and debate, as a clue to, perhaps, who the man is.
During his brief period in the senate, Obama voted to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He voted for the Patriot Act. He refused to support a bill for single payer health care. He supported the death penalty. As a presidential candidate he received more corporate backing than John McCain. He promised to close Guantanamo as a priority, but instead he has excused torture, reinstated military commissions, kept the Bush gulag intact, and opposed habeas corpus.
Daniel Ellsberg, the great whistleblower, was right, I believe, when he said, that under Bush a military coup had taken place in the United States giving the Pentagon unprecedented powers. These powers have been reinforced by the presence of Robert Gates – a Bush family crony and George W. Bush’s powerful Secretary of Defense. And by all the Bush Pentagon officials and generals who have kept their jobs under Obama.
In the middle of a recession, with millions of Americans losing their jobs and homes, Obama has increased the military budget. In Colombia he is planning to spend 46 million dollars on a new military base that will support a regime backed by death squads and further the tragic history of Washington’s intervention in that region.
In a pseudo-event in Prague, Obama promised a world without nuclear weapons to a global audience, mostly unaware that America is building new tactical nuclear weapons designed to blur the distinction between nuclear and conventional war. Like George Bush, he used the absurdity of Europe threatened by Iran to justify building a missile system aimed at Russia and China. In another pseudo-event, at the Annapolis Naval Academy, decked with flags and uniforms, Obama lied that America had gone to Iraq to bring freedom to that country. He announced that the troops were coming home. This was another deception. The head of the army, General George Casey says, with some authority, that America will be in Iraq for up to a decade. Other generals say fifteen years.
Chris Hedges, the very fine author of Empire of Illusion, puts it very well; “President Obama,” he wrote, “does one thing and brand Obama gets you to believe another.” This is the essence of successful advertising. You buy or do what the advertiser wants because of how they make you feel. And so you are kept in a perpetual state of childishness. He calls this “junk politics”.
But I think the real tragedy is that Obama, the brand, appears to have crippled or absorbed much of the anti-war movement – the peace movement. Out of 256 Democrats in Congress; 30, just 30, are willing to stand up against Obama’s and Nancy Pelosi’s war party. On June the 16th they voted for 106 billion dollars for more war.
The “Out of Iraq” caucus is out of action. Its member can’t even come up with a form of words of why they are silent. On March the 21st, a demonstration at the Pentagon by the once mighty United for Peace and Justice drew only a few thousand. The out-going president of UFPJ, Lesley Kagen, says her people aren’t turning up because, “It’s enough for many of them that Obama has a plan to end the war and that things are moving in the right direction.” And where is the mighty Move On, these days? Where is its campaign against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? And what, exactly, was said when Move On’s executive director, Jason Ruben, met Barack Obama at the White House in February?
Yes, a lot of good people mobilized for Obama. But what did they demand of him? Working to elect the Democratic presidential candidate may seem like activism, but it isn’t. Activism doesn’t give up. Activism doesn’t fall silent. Activism doesn’t rely on the opiate of hope. Woody Allen once said, “I felt a lot better when I gave up hope.” Real activism has little time for identity politics which like exceptionalism, can be fake. These are distractions that confuse and sucker good people. And not only in the United States, I can assure you.
I write for the Italian socialist newspaper, Il Manifesto, or rather I used to write for it. In February I sent the editor an article which raised questions about Obama as a progressive force. The article was rejected. Why, I asked? “For the moment,” wrote the editor, “we prefer to maintain a more positive approach to the novelty presented by Obama. We will take on specific issues, but we would not like to say that he will make no difference.” In other words, an American president drafted to promote the most rapacious system in history, is ordained and depoliticized by important sections of the left. It’s a remarkable situation. Remarkable, because those on the, so called, Radical Left have never been more aware, more conscious of the inequities of power. The Green Movement, for example, has raised the consciousness of millions, so that almost every child knows something about global warming. And yet, there seems to be a resistance, within the Green Movement, to the notion of power as a military force, a military project. And perhaps similar observations can also be made about sections of the Feminist Movement and the Gay Movement and certainly the Union Movement.
One of my favorite quotations is from Milan Kundera,
“The struggle of people against power is [the] struggle of memory against forgetting.”
We should never forget that the primary goal of great power is to distract and limit our natural desire for social justice and equity and real democracy.
Long ago Edward Bernays’ invisible government of propaganda elevated big business from its unpopular status as a kind of mafia to that of a patriotic driving force. The “American way of life” began as an advertising slogan. The modern image of Santa Claus was an invention of Coca Cola.
Today we are presented with an extraordinary opportunity. Thanks to the crash of Wall Street and the revelation, for many ordinary people, that the free market has nothing to do with freedom. The opportunity, within our grasp, is to recognize that something is stirring in America that is unfamiliar, perhaps, to many of us on the left, but is related to a great popular movement that’s growing all over the world. Look down at Latin America, less than twenty years ago there was the usual despair, the usual divisions of poverty and freedom, the usual thugs in uniforms running unspeakable regimes. Today for the first time perhaps in 500 years there’s a people’s movement based on the revival of indigenous cultures and language, a genuine populism. The recent amazing achievements in Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, El Salvador, Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay represent a struggle for community and political rights that is truly historic, with implications for all of us. The successes in Latin America are expressed perversely in the recent overthrow of the government of Honduras, because the smaller the country, the greater is the threat of a good example that the disease of emancipation will spread.
Indeed, right across the world social movements and grass roots organization have emerged to fight free market dogma. They’ve educated governments in the south that food for export is a problem, rather than a solution to global poverty. They’ve politicized ordinary people to stand up for their rights, as in the Philippines and South Africa. Look at the remarkable boycott, disinvestment and sanctions campaign, BDS, for short, aimed at Israel that’s sweeping the world. Israeli ships have been turned away from South Africa and Western Australia. A French company has been forced to abandon plans to build a railway connecting Jerusalem with illegal Israeli settlements. Israeli sporting bodies find themselves isolated. Universities in the United Kingdom have begun to sever ties with Israel. This is how apartheid South Africa was defeated. And this is how the great wind of the 1960s began to blow. And this is how every gain has been won: the end of slavery, universal suffrage, workers rights, civil rights, environmental protection, the list goes on and on.
And that brings us back, here, to the United States, because I believe something is stirring in this country. Are we aware, that in the last eight months millions of angry e-mails, sent by ordinary Americans, have flooded Washington. And I mean millions. People are outright outraged that their lives are attacked; they bear no resemblance to the passive mass presented by the media. Look at the polls; more than 2/3 of Americans say the government should care for those who cannot care for themselves, sixty-four percent would pay higher taxes to guarantee health care for everyone, sixty percent are favorable towards Unions, seventy percent want nuclear disarmament, seventy-two percent want the US completely out of Iraq and so on and so on. But where is much of the left? Where is the social justice movement? Where is the peace movement? Where is the civil rights movement? Ordinary Americans, for too long, have been misrepresented by stereotypes that are contemptuous. James Madison referred to his compatriots in the public as ignorant and meddlesome outsiders. And this contempt is probably as strong today, among the elite, as it was back then. That’s why the progressive attitudes of the public are seldom reported in the media, because they’re not ignorant, they’re subversive, they’re informed and they’re even anti-American. I once asked a friend, the great American war correspondent and humanitarian, Martha Gellhorn, to explain the term “anti-American” to me. “I’ll tell you what anti-American is,” she said in her forceful way, “its what governments and their vested interests call those who honor America by objecting to war and the theft of resources and believing in all of humanity. There are millions of these anti-Americans in the United States, they are ordinary people who belong to no elite and who judge their government in moral terms though they would call it common decency. They are not vain; they are the people with a waitful conscience, the best of America’s citizens. Sure, they disappear from view now and then, but they are like seeds beneath the snow. I would say they are truly exceptional.” Truly exceptional, I like that.
My own guess is that a populism is growing, once again in America evoking a powerful force beneath the surface which has a proud history. From such authentic grass roots Americanism came women suffrage, the eight hour day, graduated income tax, public ownership of railways and communications, the breaking of the power of corporate lobbyists and much more. In other words, real democracy. The American populists were far from perfect, but they often spoke for ordinary people and they were betrayed by leaders who urged them to compromise and merge with the Democratic Party. That was long ago, but how familiar it sounds. My guess is that something is coming again. The signs are there. Noam Chomsky is right when he says that, “Mere sparks can ignite a popular movement that may seem dormant.” No one predicted 1968, no one predicted the fall of apartheid, or the Berlin Wall, or the civil rights movement, or the great Latino rising of a few years ago.
I suggest that we take Woody Allen’s advice and give up on hope and listen, instead, to voices from below. What Obama and the bankers and the generals and the IMF and the CIA and CNN and BBC fear, is ordinary people coming together and acting together. It’s a fear as old as democracy, a fear that suddenly people convert their anger to action as they’ve done so often throughout history.
“At a time of universal deceit,” wrote George Orwell, “telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
Thank you.
US elites never seem to get tired of their fake election days. Today, it was nonstop coverage of their Afghan elections on National Imperialist Radio, (otherwise known as NPR). I call these elections fake because they are run by an imperialist occupying force that doesn’t even have the ability to speak the native tongue, let alone have any valid reason for occupying Afghanistan. The yakity yaks on NPR and other corporate channels don’t have even the slightest clue of what’s going on, yet in their doting coverage of these fake elections made for the US-made Hellistan it was nonstop pretense otherwise.
At least the BBC gave out the real news and that was that 300,000 foreigner controlled troops were everywhere, even as nobody showed up. The ballot boxes were full though (how did those ‘ballots’ get there?), and this was heard even on NPR! What American actually cares if the ballot boxes in Afghanistan were stuffed? It was a fake election anyway, wasn’t it? So no wonder Americans are deserting Commander in Chief Obama in mass! Some ‘changer’ he was… Before it is over, Americans may want to waterboard the twit! BOOM!
The specialty of the Jewish State is destruction, whether it be in Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, or Gaza. Without destruction there can be no expansion of the Jewish State which has now become like a spreading cancer. Central to this Jewish State expansion is the Israeli military-industrial-security complex, the Israeli one becoming an appendage of the American one.
For a Jewish population of 5 1/2 million, 60,000 jobs are directly related to the manufacture of hardware products for the military-industrial-security complex, many for export elsewhere. There are multiple connections to all the US companies also involved in the same production. That’s a lot of firepower to fuel war around the planet, let alone merely in the Middle East. The result? See the BBC’s Audio slideshow: Homeless in Gaza for just one example at a personal level.
An infestation of a parasite carried by a small genus of biting flies, Leischmania.
Most of them indigenous to Mesopotamia.
There was a BBC news show yestereven, about the British pulling out from their latest FAILED attempt to impose their “superior” culture and civilization on one of the oldest civilizations on Earth.
The Tommies were packing up all their gear to leave, they had tanks and trucks etc up on racks being power-washed and fine-cleaned to get rid of all the Iraqi sand… and especially the Leischmania flies and their eggs contained in that sand.
One of the Tommies said something that resonated, “We learned this a long time ago, UNLIKE THE YANKS WHO NEVER DID learn it”.
See, we were asked how exactly sand flies from Iraq could cause Leischmaniasis HERE, in Colorado Springs.
“Where, oh where” we were asked, “could those sand flies have come from?”
My sanity and that of Miss Johnnie were questioned at times…
That it would be somehow impossible to get the flies and therefore the parasites they carry from Iraq to the middle of the United States.
How about it, GI Joe types, when you came back, how thoroughly did you have to clean the gear?
Some of you were probably very good at it, but then, are ALL your comrades so diligent?
Is EVERY commander from that gigantic Mongolian Cluster Fuck as dedicated as perhaps your own officers?
You know as well as I do that some or perhaps most of them are the type who can’t find his ass with both hands.
The Army is still denying that they screwed up in this instance.
Or that Leischmaniasis even exists in Colorado.
Until last year they were officially denying that Gulf War Syndrome could have anything to do with the Depleted Uranium shells.
There’s still denials of PTSD and Helmet-head.
There’s still denials of Agent Orange.
You guys are being screwed by the Army even long after you leave, you really ought to get angry then get even.
Or at least get loud and get started demanding justice.
Don’t let them do a Bonus March Massacre on YOU.
The center of the panic is El Distrito Federal, Mexico, which if you think about it a little, is exactly where one might think that an epidemic of Swine Flu might begin to happen. But jokes aside, this is a serious situation and this disease has already spread to the US, though the panic about it hasn’t quite yet. Instead, I would call it an Unease. How is it in Mexico City though? Mexico flu: Your experiences from the BBC.
UN head against new Somalia force ‘In December, Mr Ban had said few countries were willing to send peacekeeping troops to Somalia, as there was no peace to keep.’ That would be the United States’ fault since they tore the country apart along with the help of Ethiopia’s dictator.
Again ‘the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, warned against sending a UN peacekeeping force to Somalia.’ He was opposing a push by the US controlled ‘UN’ Security Council to gather yet more mercenary troops to occupy Somalia with, now that the Ethiopians have long gone arunning from the havoc they caused while serving George W. Bush.
Why is Barack Obama so eager to continue doing the same wrecking job? Are there now too many underage ‘pirates’ pestering the Buccaneer Emperor for him to pullout from screwing Somalia?
For more coverage, see the BBC’s report… On Board a White Pirate Vessel
The BBC today has a report that addresses this question some… See Horrors of KLA prison camps revealed ..Remember when all the Democrats helped stamped the American people into a ‘humanitarian’ adventurism to partition Yugoslavia in alliance with Pentagon bombs?
The sick Catholic Church just never ceases to amaze! Italy is now embroiled in its very own Terry Schiavo case, and the Catholic Church is trying to bring murder charges against a father for allowing his brain dead daughter to finally die after 17 years passed in a vegetative state. Can you imagine people any more cruel than this? Despite the change in the Pope’s views about evolution, this Pope and this church seem to have less brains than a herd of spider monkeys does! Death probe for coma case father and see also…
‘At an emotional press conference on live TV, Premier Silvio Berlusconi vowed to save Englaro`s life. A law on living wills sparked by the Englaro case has started its way through parliament and the government hopes it will be passed by the summer. There is currently no legislation governing living wills in Italy. A living-will law passed by a conservative-dominated parliament would be extremely restrictive, observers say, although it could be open to charges of breaching the Italian Constitution. Berlusconi has said the law will “forbid any sort of euthanasia“. It would also prevent doctors from removing feeding tubes from people “unable to take care of themselves“, he said.’ from ELUANA FATHER PROBED FOR MURDER
It’s the Italian Catholic Church behind this semi-fascist Italian version of Dubya the chimp, Silvio Berlusconi, but this case is not the only one in the news this week that demonstrates the sick Catholic Church’s lunacy! Travel to Brazil and we see where the one half way sane priest in the Church get’s canned by his pedophile hiding archbishop this week! Do you think that the creepy Pope Rat will reverse this? Not a chance! He’s going to side with the pedophile hiding archbishop, that’s what! See Brazil priest suspended for views
…The BBC report doesn’t let you in on that this archbishop was in the news in 2002 for covering up for his pedophile priest under investigation who later got convicted despite his active opposition to the police’s investigation! Sick! And in contrast, the punished priest’s supposed crimes? He advocated that condoms be used during sex! And he had the nerve to say that homosexuals shouldn’t be discriminated against.
Here is the Archbishop now back when he was a mere bishop relatively unrewarded for his service to the Catholic Church hierarchy….
‘Brazil Fr. Sebastiao Luiz Tomaz 13 – Nineteen girls between the ages of 10 and 16 reported some type of sexual contact with the priest in exchange for clothes and money. Later the same year, Bishop Aldo Pagotto was denounced by the Public Ministry of Ceara for attempting to coerce this priest’s victims to change their testimony. By July 2002 21 victims had come forward, and nine claims had been proven with medical evidence.14’
from SEXUAL ABUSE & MISCONDUCT IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH Note though… This archbishop is a biggie in the movement to criminalize all abortions in Brazil, so Pope Rat certainly will be helping the archbishop out in his dispute with the liberal priest. Immoral people preaching morality to others… That’s the church! They make one want to vomit up Holy Wafers big time!
Etc, etc. Lest comment responses be perceived to address a fresh GIYUS, hasbara, cyber-friend of Israel. “They” parrot the same Internet Megaphone IDF propaganda talking points: Gaza is not occupied, there was no genocide, Israel’s birthright to exist is a moot point, Zionism is neither racism nor Apartheid, anti-Arab Professor Bernard Lewis, the greenhouses gifted by Israel, CAMERA articles, etc.
UPDATE: The original title of this post was:
Denise was Mitch was Mary was Ronald
Now: Alex is Walid is Peter is Allan is Ali is Sean is Denise…
Our Newark NJ gender switching Bob & Carol & Tom & Alice just jumped [back] from IP 96.242 to 71.187. Posters, notice the comment IP when you reply to “Denise” or his next impersonation. Part of the Megaphone strategy is to project a multitude of voices indignant about accusations leveled at Israel.
“Denise Cohen” 71.187.138.56 + 96.242.105.155
“Mitch Horace” 96.242.105.155
“Ronald Goff” 71.187.135.202 + 71.187.139.75 + 96.234.113.207
“Ellie Bloch” 71.187.135.202
“Kevin Greenough” 71.187.135.202
“Andrew Schiffman” 71.187.139.75
“Morton Perelman” 71.187.139.75 + 96.234.104.119
“Tom Ely” 96.234.104.119
“Alicia Kirsch” 96.234.101.120
“Grace Cohen” 96.234.101.120
“Claire Short” 96.234.101.120
“Mary Walters” 71.187.141.32 + 96.234.107.159UPDATE:
“Ali Duran” 193.200.150.45 + 71.187.138.56
“Sean Dobson” 193.200.150.45 + 71.187.138.56
“Peter Krieger” 193.200.150.26
“Walid Ashwari” 193.200.150.29
“Allan Faver” 193.200.150.167
“Alex Shamir” 193.200.150.167
“Melissa Cook” 71.187.138.56
“David Stengler” 71.187.128.24
In this case, ONE voice UNITED in the guise of too many. It may be only cricket to give “Denise” our ear. Can we hope he/she will develop some intellectual honesty?
Looking forward, here are some of the alerts which GIYUS and partners are circulating for troll support:
2009-02-15
U.S. now sees Iran as pursuing nuclear bomb
Little more than a year after U.S. spy agencies concluded that Iran had halted work on a nuclear weapon, the Obama administration has made it clear that it believes there is no question that Tehran is seeking the bomb.
Act Now!2009-02-11
Amnesty: Hamas at a deadly campaign against rivals
Amnesty is exposing Hamas’ deadly campaign against its Palestinian critics and rivals. At least two dozen people were killed and many more tortured during and after Israel’s recent Gaza offensive.
Recommend Article2009-02-04
UN: Hamas seized Gaza food aid and blankets
The U.N. says Hamas police in Gaza have raided a U.N. warehouse and seized thousands of blankets and food parcels meant for needy residents.
Expose this story2009-02-01
Cyprus Searches Iranian Arms Ship
Cypriot authorities are searching a cargo ship suspected by the United States of carrying Iranian arms to Hamas militants in Gaza. Cypriot President Dimitris Christofias said the ship had violated U.N. resolutions.
Expose this story2009-01-26
BBC, Sky News won’t broadcast Gaza charity appeal
To protect their objectivity both BBC and Sky News have refused to broadcast an emergency fund raising appeal for people living in the Gaza Strip.
Support their decision2009-01-21
Iranian Holocaust Denial Book to be Issued in English
Iranian publisher plans to launch English- and Arabic-language versions of a book of caricatures and satirical writings about the Holocaust
Protest this act2009-01-19
United in the fight against Hamas’ Terror
Six European leaders visited Jerusalem yesterday to extend their support to Israel and pledge their commitment to ending the arms smuggling into Gaza.
Send them a message
I am curious as to why a Roman Catholic bishop would risk a second excommunication over the historic particulars of the Holocaust. Bishop Richard Williamson is being labeled a “Holocaust Denier” because he questions the extent, and mechanism, of the official version of the Holocaust. Because Williamson is also criticized for his skepticism about the official 9/11 narrative, and for his praise for the Unabomber’s manifesto, I want to take a closer look, and wonder what is he reading?
Here’s what the outspoken Williamson told Swedish SVT in a November 2008 interview, as transcribed by the BBC:
“I believe that the historical evidence is strongly against, is hugely against, six million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler… I believe there were no gas chambers [during World War II]”
First, I’m compelled to pose a naive question: If we can all agree that Jews died in huge numbers by incomparable horrors at the hands of the Nazis, would it matter what the exact death toll was, or which killing method predominated? Why? What is the need for laws to restrict historians who are trying to reconstruct the record from emerging facts? Must preemptive “anti-defamation” laws mandate that historians stick to the official “untold” number and “indescribable” evil?
Even if we postulate, albeit cynically, that Holocaust reverence is critical to upholding American public support for Israel‘s “right to exist” in the Middle East, how could a revision of the casualties, in any case a horrific magnitude, make an difference?
Millions of Jews fell victim to the Third Reich. No one is denying it, and historical revision is not trying to bring the Holocaust victims back to life. Holocaust Remembrance of the Jewish victims has remained a political priority around the world, advocating commemoration in education, literature, civic life, and pop culture. Why then, an aversion to scrutiny?
Last week a fellow Society of St. Pius X member, Rev. Floriano Abrahamowicz was ejected from SSPX for coming to Williamson’s and the Pope’s defense.
While the usual politicians and Jewish community leaders are voicing their indignation, can we ask, are the Bishop’s beliefs really at odds with accepted orthodoxy? The media will reiterate that the Six Million figure has always been beyond dispute. All the while, official scholarship has been recording otherwise. In Germany, revisionist historians are jailed for Holocaust Denial. Yet bit by bit, mainstream historians have been able to publish divergent theses which withstand legal refutation.
For the sake of argument, let’s dismiss all the “deniers” as kooks, and look only at the traditionally vetted voices.
On the subject of Auschwitz, where four million of the total six million Jews were believed to have perished, Der Spiegel managing editor Fritjof Meyer a continued critic of revisionism, summarized in Osteuropa 52, 5/2002, p. 631:
“In 1945, the Soviet Investigatory Commission numbered four million victims in the National Socialist work and extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, a product of war propaganda. Under coercion, camp Commandant Höß named three million and recanted. Up until now, how many people actually fell victim to this singular mass murder could only be estimated. The first Holocaust historian, Gerald Reitlinger, assumed one million, while the latest state of research estimated it to be several hundred thousand fewer.”
Naturally even Meyer touched off a firestorm by integrating the sum of official scholarship into the big picture. The difficulties which historians face in reaching variant findings are explained by another mainstream scholar, noted Hitler historian Dr. Werner Maser, Professor for History and International Law, Munich University, Falsification, Legend, and Truth about Hitler and Stalin, Olzog, Munich 2004, on p.332
“To be sure, […] the extermination of the Jews is considered to be one of the best researched aspects of contemporary history […], but that is not the case. […] Indeed, whole regions remain as much terra incognita as ever, […] German historians exhibit timidity about taking on the horrible issue and possibly bringing to light details that do not agree with the accounts which have multiplied for a very long time.”
And about the deterrence of the Holocaust Denial laws:
“The sword of Damocles hovers over historians (not only in Germany) who portray the controversial phases of history as they ‘actually were’ – and identify the frequently even officially codified ideological specifications as falsifications of history.”
The question of the gas chambers is raised by the absence of evidence. According to major Holocaust authority Dr. Arno J. Mayer, Professor of Modern Jewish History at Princeton University, in Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? The “Final Solution” in History, Pantheon, New York 1990, p. 362:
“Sources for the study of the gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable. Even though Hitler and the Nazis made no secret of their war on the Jews, the SS operatives dutifully eliminated all traces of their murderous activities and instruments. No written orders for gassing have turned up thus far. The SS not only destroyed most camp records, which were in any case incomplete, but also razed nearly all killing and crematory installations well before the arrival of Soviet troops. Likewise, care was taken to dispose of the bones and ashes of the victims.”
Justifiably, scholars are skeptical that the complete absence of evidence should be taken as proof of its existence and total suppression. Some camps were overrun before the Germans could destroy any part of them. Mayer continues, p. 163:
“In the meantime, there is no denying the many contradictions, ambiguities, and errors in the existing sources. […] Much the same is true of for the conflicting estimates and extrapolations of the number of victims, since there are no reliable statistics to work with. […] Both radical skepticism and rigid dogmatism about the exact processes of extermination and the exact number of victims are the bane of sound historical interpretation”
In light of the before-sited Wannsee Conference documents now being considered post-war forgeries, Mayer explains, p 163:
“To date there is no certainty about who gave the order, and when, to install the gas chambers used for the murder of Jews at Auschwitz. As no written command has been located, there is a strong presumption that the order was issued and received orally”
With no written record of a “Final Solution,” and the implausibility of a completely vaporized paper trail, mainstream scholars have had to improvise an explanation for how an extermination directive was disseminated. University of Vermont Professor Raul Hilberg, member of US Holocaust Memorial Council, author of The Destruction of the European Jews, (Holmes & Meyer, New York 1985), was quoted in Newsday, Feb. 23, 1983:
“But what began in 1941 was a process of destruction [of the Jews] not planned in advance, not organized centrally by any agency. There was no blueprint and there was no budget for destructive measures. They [these measures] were taken step by step, one step at a time. Thus came about not so much a plan being carried out, but an incredible meeting of minds, a consensus mind reading by a far-flung [German] bureaucracy.”
Hilberg himself ran into trouble with the authorized version, because he refused to corroborate tales of Jewish rebellion against their Nazi jailers. His group-think theory extended to the Jews themselves, putting emphasis on their acceptance of being exploited as war industry slave labor.
“I had to examine the Jewish tradition of trusting God, princes, laws and contracts […] Ultimately I had to ponder the Jewish calculation that the persecutor would not destroy what he could economically exploit. It was precisely this Jewish strategy that dictated accommodation and precluded resistance.”
That’s where the extermination camp thesis becomes less probable than the work camp. Perhaps the Jews didn’t resist because they were being worked, not gassed. Worked to death, of course, but dying as more a consequence of wartime Germany’s depleting resources, than from a deliberate eradication effort. Evidence is plentiful of the work camps and dead bodies.
And isn’t that the answer to my innocent question? To doubt whether the murder weapon was a pistol or a knife, means calling into question the crime entirely. That’s why revisionists are decried for being “deniers.” While we presume the distinction makes little difference, because clearly a murder was committed regardless, the prosecutor constructing the accusations wants to prove his motive and not another.
There are many details about which historians have begun to disagree. Many of the witness accounts have been proven to be unreliable. Even Elie Wiesel was compelled to reclassified his memoir as a novel. The Holocaust as later generations have come to know it was not as the WWII generation saw it. Even those soldiers who encountered the atrocities themselves.
Professor Hilberg recounts studying at Brooklyn College under Hans Rosenberg, a fellow Jew. Even in the wake of the haunting newsreels of the concentration camps, Hilberg records that Rosenberg remarked in a 1948 lecture:
“The most wicked atrocities perpetrated on a civilian population in modern times occurred during the Napoleonic occupation of Spain.”
I don’t really subscribe to the idea that the Holocaust is diminished by learning that the WWII concentration camp victims died from systemic and despotic abuse, starvation and exhaustion. But those holding the secrets believe that the concept of the Holocaust being the greatest evil perpetrated upon mankind falls apart if cracks are allowed to form in the accepted narrative.
Perhaps the German population, and for that matter, the Catholic Church, did not intercede more vigorously because there was no premeditated extermination program. We can say now that German reinforcements being sent to the Russian Front knew they were being sent to their deaths, but this is only with hindsight.
Is this Bishop Williamson’s interest in revisiting the Holocaust, to rehabilitate the church’s role? I doubt it. The Catholic church cannot escape culpability for its instrumental role in support of the Nazis, guilty of ware crimes and crimes against humanity, initiating a war of aggression being the chief charge at the Nuremberg Trials for example, before even taking into account the concentration camps.
Perhaps the American industrialists and bankers who knew about the camps did not interfere because they understood the camps were for the supply of slave labor. Isn’t this a key enigma of the Holocaust, as we grapple with it? How could we have not known? How could this have been allowed to happen?
Perhaps the signs above the camp gates which read ARBEIT MACHT FREI, work earns freedom, meant what they said. They might have been inescapable ironies, but not the cruel mockery of which we accuse the Germans.
Why would factories like IG Farben and Krupp want to liquidate their valuable cheap workforce? Why would camps meant to exterminate have infirmaries? Why would the wardens treat inmates for illness while simultaneously sending incoming transports to directly to ovens?
Today the popular conscience has been saturated with the ghostly images of the concentration camp victims. How to explain the emaciated inmates discovered by the liberating troops, many of whom could not be saved from dying, even under the administration of the liberators? Dr. Arno J. Mayer concedes this explanation, p. 365
“[…] the whole of Auschwitz was intermittently in the grip of a devastating typhus epidemic. The result was an unspeakable death rate. […] There is a distinction between dying from ‘natural’ or ‘normal’ causes and being killed by shooting, hanging, phenol injection, or gassing. […] from 1942 to 1945, certainly at Auschwitz, but probably overall, more Jews were killed by so-called ‘natural’ causes than by ‘unnatural’ ones.”
This is not to diminish the crime of the Holocaust one iota. The German people, the industrialists, the church, the anti-Semites, are far more guilty because the crime against the Jews was banal and common. It was not devised by agents of unspeakable evil.
Other aspiring genocidal nations and peoples cannot excuse their acts because their methods fall demonstrably below the mythic proportions of the Holocaust.
The BBC’s Ghosts of 1948 haunt Gaza crisis shows the absolute vindictiveness of many Jewish Israelis who live on the land of the ancestors of those now bombed in Gaza by their army. Is this ‘Holocaust denial’, or what? (The picture is of victims of the Jewish pogrom against Palestinians done at the Sabra and Shatila massacres in 1982)