Showing posts with label Isreal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Isreal. Show all posts

Thursday, January 05, 2023

nation v. faith


THE ABSURD TIMES



PROTO-FASCISM

BY

HONEST CHARLIE


It has become clear even to the lowest and most vulgar minds in the world, if they bother to observe, which is unlikely as recently the highest level of political observance they practice, or perhaps are capable of of observing, is the role counting in the capital building, free footage for domestic "news" outlets, if they do observe (and this is possible) activity in Israel that this Zionist state is determined to wage a war not only as a step toward apartheid but as a FINAL SOLUTION. Zionists are still aware of the term which they learned from Hitler and Nazi Germany, and which is being preached increasingly by Israelis such as Fogel in the illustration above, slogans preached openly just as white supremacist slogans gained traction and visibility in the U.S. as a result of the recent administration here.


Notions or phrases such as Zionism or Christian Nationalism are not religious terms, nor is anyone who is a member or advocate of such things a believer in some higher power. Furthermore, any individual who claims to believe in such property-oriented and forceful aggression over truth can not possibly be considered a believer in such a "faith" without directly insulting it and contradicting all that it really stands for.


Although a Security Council meeting was mentioned as convening today, no information on the, not surprisngly, has been made public. However, here is an interview, reproduced word for word, with two very knowledgeable professionals on the subject:


"Far-right Israeli politician Itamar Ben-Gvir's Tuesday visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem is being roundly condemned across the Middle East. Ben-Gvir is a key part of Benjamin Netanyahu's new far-right government, which includes ultranationalist and ultraorthodox parties that are calling openly for the annexation of the West Bank. "The international community has to speak with one voice in rejecting this extremism and rejecting those terrorists and those elements of fascists in the Israeli government," Palestine's ambassador to the U.N., Riyad Mansour, urged Wednesday. In 2007, Ben-Gvir was convicted in an Israeli court of incitement to racism and supporting a terrorist organization. In 2021, he relocated his parliamentary office to the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem, where settlers have attempted to violently evict Palestinian residents from their homes. As the newly sworn-in minister of national security, Ben-Gvir will now be responsible for border police in the West Bank. We speak to Gideon Levy, an Israeli journalist and author, and Diana Buttu, a Palestinian lawyer and former adviser to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organization, about Ben-Gvir's visit, Netanyahu's new government and surging violence against Palestinians.


Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: The United Nations Security Council is preparing to hold an emergency meeting to discuss the recent visit by Israel's new national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem. His visit was condemned across the Middle East. The Palestinian Foreign Ministry called his visit an "unprecedented provocation." The militant group Hamas warned Ben-Gvir's actions could lead to more conflict. Jordan has summoned Israel's ambassador to protest the visit, with Jordan's Foreign Ministry decrying it as "scandalous and [an] unacceptable violation of international law."

Al-Aqsa Mosque is one of the holiest sites in Islam. It's also one of the holiest sites in Judaism. Temple Mount was the site of a Jewish temple destroyed by the Romans 2,000 years ago. On Wednesday, Palestine's ambassador to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, condemned Itamar Ben-Gvir's visit.

RIYAD MANSOUR: The attack is not only against our holy sites in Al-Aqsa Mosque and in the Haram-e-Sharif. There are — because of this environment of extremism that this Israeli extreme government, the extremest in the history of Israel, is providing, is leading to additional aggression against our Christian sites, Christian graveyards. You've seen by now that there are crosses over, you know, graveyards being trampled upon and attacked by extreme settlers. This is a toxic environment. The international community has to speak with one voice in rejecting this extremism and rejecting those terrorists and those elements of fascists in the Israeli government.

AMY GOODMAN: Itamar Ben-Gvir's visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque came just days after he was sworn in as part of Benjamin Netanyahu's new far-right government, which includes ultranationalist and ultraorthodox parties that are calling openly for the annexation of the West Bank.

Netanyahu's selection of Itamar Ben-Gvir as his national security minister has sparked widespread condemnation. In 2007, Ben-Gvir was convicted of incitement to racism and supporting a terrorist organization. Ben-Gvir lives in an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank. In 2021, he relocated his parliamentary office to the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem, where settlers have attempted to violently evict Palestinian residents from their homes. For years, Ben-Gvir hung a picture in his home of Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli American who killed 29 Palestinians at a mosque in Hebron in 1994. The Jerusalem Post's editor-in-chief described Ben-Gvir as, quote, "the modern Israeli version of an American white supremacist and a European fascist," unquote. Ben-Gvir will now be responsible for border police in the occupied West Bank at a time when violence and the killing of Palestinians has been surging.

To talk more about Itamar Ben-Gvir's visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Israel's new far-right government, considered the most far-right government in Israel's history, we're joined by two guests. In Tel Aviv, Gideon Levy is with us, an award-winning Israeli journalist and author, columnist for the newspaper Haaretz, member of its editorial board. He's also the author of the book The Punishment of Gaza. And in Ramallah, we're joined by Diana Buttu. She is a Palestinian lawyer and former adviser to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organization, also a fellow at Democracy for the Arab World Now, or DAWN. Her latest piece is an op-ed in The New York Times headlined "Israelis Have Put Benjamin Netanyahu Back in Power. Palestinians Will Surely Pay the Price."

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Diana Buttu, let's begin with you. Let's start with this latest action, considered an incitement by so many, both Palestinians and Israelis, not to mention the rest of the Middle East. Talk about who Itamar Ben-Gvir is. I mean, he wasn't just charged with incitement of racism against Arabs; he was convicted of it and supporting a terrorist organization.

DIANA BUTTU: Yes. Itamar Ben-Gvir is — he's a disciple, he's a follower, of Rabbi Meir Kahane, who was a man who believed that Palestinians should be ethnically cleansed from their homeland. And Itamar Ben-Gvir has espoused the exact same views as Meir Kahane and continues to espouse these same views. He's talked very openly about his support for Baruch Goldstein.

And his visit, his latest visit, to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound is not just a visit. It's an attempt to show that there will forever be Israeli sovereignty on the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and he's trying to incite violence. Not only is he trying to incite violence, he has long believed that the Al-Aqsa Mosque should be — should disappear, and in its place the Temple Mount be recreated. So, his policies have always been that of inciting to violence, inciting to hatred. And although he was only convicted once, he has been indicted more than 50 times.

The fact that he is allowed to be a minister in this government just shows how much it is that the international community is allowing fascism to reign, and that they're effectively doing nothing. All that we have heard since this visit and since he's become minister is that the world supports the status quo. But it is that status quo that has led to people like Itamar Ben-Gvir being able to become minister and their actions being normalized. I fear that what he intends to do is to create more and more and more violence as a pretext to, once and for all, as he put it, showing Palestinians who the masters of the house are. Those are his words, not mine.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Gideon Levy, could you also respond to Ben-Gvir's appointment as national security minister and, in particular, his appointment to this post?

GIDEON LEVY: Benjamin Netanyahu had to create a government. He heads — he is leading the biggest party. And he decided this time to go with the most extreme right-wingers. The problem is not this. The question is why those right-wingers are so popular in Israel. And here we face a reality which is well known for a long time. The Israeli society is a very right-wing, nationalistic and, part of it, racist society. We have to face this. That's the main problem, not if Ben-Gvir is minister or is not. The problem is: Who are we facing when we speak about Israel?

And in many ways, I see also a positive side to the results of the last elections. By tearing all the masks, now we see reality. Now it's not the umbrella of the Zionist left, who speaks so nicely and does almost the same like the right-wingers. Now we face the extreme racism in its most pure expression. Those people don't deny their racism. Those people say very clearly that Jewish supremacy means that only Jews have rights in this land. And I hope that both some parts of Israeli society and, above all, the international community will finally draw the conclusions.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Gideon Levy, that's exactly right that these far-right parties have received this kind of support, almost 11% in this election, but that's much higher than in the past. So, could you explain why you think these far-right, hard-line, extremist parties are more popular now in Israel than they've been in the past?

GIDEON LEVY: It's almost inevitable. If you continue with the occupation, supported by the Zionist left — not only supported but led by the Zionist left — and if this reality of an apartheid state continues, it calls for extremism. It calls for telling the truth. It calls for telling — for tearing the mask and saying, "We aim to be an apartheid state. The occupation is not temporary; the occupation is here to stay. And if it is here to stay, it means we are an apartheid state, and we are even not ashamed of it." After 56 years of occupation, you can't expect anything but this radical movement, while the Zionist left never tried to separate itself from the occupation, never tried seriously to put an end to it. So, if there is no other force in the Israeli power, let's go for the extreme. This makes a lot of sense.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Diana, could you also talk about that, the shift in the Israeli polity further to the right, and the role, indeed, that the left has played? You wrote a recent piece headlined "Israel's So-Called Left Has Aided the Far Right's Rise."

DIANA BUTTU: Yes. Gideon is exactly right. Look, there's been a so-called left inside Israel for quite some time, but this so-called left is — I say "so-called" because that's exactly what it is, so-called — they self-proclaim as left-wing, but this is a left wing that has never stood up against the occupation. It's a left wing that has supported the various attacks on the Gaza Strip. It's a left wing that has supported the siege and blockade on the Gaza Strip. It's a left wing that has supported the enactment of racist legislation, even in the past couple of years. And so, when you're an Israeli voter who sees that the options are between this so-called left wing, which has supported the exact same things as the right wing has, then, of course, it's natural that they're going to vote for this fascist right.

The big problem has been that we've never seen that Israelis have paid a price for their electoral choices. It's always been that Palestinians pay the price. And with this new government, it's going to be Palestinians once again, but even more than in the past. Unlike previous Israeli governments where there were other issues that they may have been focused on, this current government, this new government, is myopically and only focused on making life miserable for Palestinians. They don't have any other political platform, other than to try to ethnically cleanse Palestinians. This is why we've seen, since the beginning of this year, that Israel has killed at least one Palestinian per day. And this is why we're seeing the plans to completely ethnically cleanse the Palestinian town of Masafer Yatta. It's because this government has put in its crosshairs Palestinians. And given that there's nobody in the international community that's stopping them, it's going to continue full steam ahead.

AMY GOODMAN: So, let me ask you about Masafer Yatta, near Hebron, in the occupied West Bank, the southern part. Israel's military has begun demolishing homes, water supplies, olive orchards. This week, Israeli armored vehicles accompanied demolition crews as they razed homes and farms in two villages. Last year, the Israeli High Court of Justice approving the home demolitions, which will uproot more than a thousand people, leading to the U.S. congressmember, who happens to be Palestinian American, Rashida Tlaib, tweeting, "Not even one week into 2023, new far-right apartheid government is moving to ethnically cleanse entire communities — which would displace more than 1,000 Palestinian residents, including 500 children. All with American backing, bulldozers, and bullets."

Talk about the U.S. support at this point for Israel. You have President Biden congratulating Netanyahu on his return to power, saying he looks forward to working with an old friend for decades, adding, "the United States will continue to support the two-state solution and to oppose policies that endanger its viability or contradict our mutual interests and values." Can you talk about what you feel — and I'd also like to get Gideon's response to this — the U.S. should be doing now?

DIANA BUTTU: Look, the U.S. is way behind in the times. And if they still think that there's something left of a two-state solution, then it's only in their dreams that they're seeing it, because we certainly don't see it on the ground. Instead what we have seen is that Israel has been allowed to do whatever it wants when it comes to killing Palestinians, when it comes to stealing Palestinian land, when it comes to ethnic cleansing. When it comes to crossing the red lines that are enshrined in international law, Israel is allowed to get away with it — and not only get away with it, but continues to receive support and financial support from the United States, as well. This isn't just a question of statements, but they're also getting financial support from the United States. And as we look around the world and we ask ourselves, "We're now in the year 2023, and they're still talking about a two-state solution, a two-state solution that died more than two decades ago?" And yet they've done absolutely nothing on the ground to make sure that two-state solution comes to fruition. Instead, all that they have done is to facilitate Israel's process of slowly ethnically cleansing Palestinians.

One of the new members of this new government is a man named Smotrich, who came out just last year, in 2021, and said that the only reason that Palestinians who are citizens of Israel, like me, are still allowed to exist is because the job wasn't finished in 1948, thereby basically telling us that our time here is short.

What the U.S. has instead done is, instead of giving them a red light and scaling back and decolonizing and pushing for Israel to end its occupation, end its apartheid, it's pretty much served as a mask for Israel to continue to do whatever it wants to do. And this is why we're in this situation now. It's we've seen that the world is doing nothing. We see that the Israelis, as a result, don't have to pay a price. And so, once again, it's going to be Palestinians that pay the price for Israel's electoral choices.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Gideon Levy, if you can respond? Also talk about what you're writing in Haaretz, a very well-respected Israeli newspaper, on whose board you serve, and the response of the Israeli population, for example, to these demolitions.

GIDEON LEVY: Let's face reality. The United States is supporting the apartheid system, is very interested in continuing the occupation and has no interest in human rights of the Palestinians. There's no other way to describe the American position throughout decades, because would it be different, would the United States seriously mean to put an end to the occupation, the occupation could have come to its end years ago, if not decades ago. So, it's all about a hollow lip service that the United States is paying from time to time, all kind of hollow condemnations. By the end of the day, Israel, this apartheid state, is this closest ally of the United States. The money of the taxpayers of the United States go to Israel more than to any other country in the world, and this means that the United States is in favor of an apartheid state, nothing else but this.

As about your second question, the question about the Israeli reaction to what's going on in Masafer Yatta can be asked only — and, Amy, I highly appreciate you, but can be asked only in the United States, not in Israel, because in Israel, nobody cares, and nobody heard about Masafer Yatta. Masafer Yatta is well known maybe to the readership of Haaretz, not all of it, maybe to a small devoted left camp which is still active. But most of the Israelis not only couldn't care less, they never heard about it. And if they will hear about it, they will just yawn in your face, because, finally, they all buy the official propaganda — namely, Israel is doing it against terror, or Israel has to protect itself, and all those old slogans of lies and lies and lies.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Gideon, could you outline what you expect the policies that this new government will initiate, from substantive changes to the judiciary, as well as restrictions on civil liberties within Israel itself, and, of course, what we said in our introduction, the steps towards the annexation of the West Bank?

GIDEON LEVY: As we talk now, the Supreme Court of Israel is dealing with some of the first actions. And the Supreme Court will try to stop them, but the Supreme Court by itself will be a subject of attacks by this new government, who is going to limit the legal system very much and very quickly. It's really admirable to see how fast they act. While the Zionist left had one-and-a-half year of being power and did nothing, they are not yet one week in power, and they are already running with their initiatives.

Now, about annexation, I can tell you — that's my, obviously, private view — I really hope they will annexate at least part of the West Bank, if not all of the West Bank. The West Bank was annexated 55 years ago. The West Bank is practically annexated to Israel. Israelis live in the West Bank and behave in the West Bank as if it's part of Israel, and it is part of Israel. Now, once Israel will declare it officially and legally, then it will be really a question, because then the apartheid state is declared, you understand it. If Israel annexate the West Bank without giving full civil rights and national rights to the Palestinians, which nobody in this government or in any other government means to give, once this is happening, Israel declares itself an apartheid state. And then I would like to see how Washington and the EU and some others will react to an official declaration of apartheid. Will they treat it like the first apartheid state, namely, South Africa, or will they continue to hug Israel as a darling of the West, even though it's a declared apartheid state? So, let's challenge the world.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Diana, could respond to the points that Gideon has made? And also, you've written a great deal in your recent articles both about settler violence against Palestinians and Israeli security forces' complicity in that violence. If you could elaborate on that and respond to what Gideon said about apartheid?

DIANA BUTTU: Look, it's already an apartheid state. And I don't need for Israel to declare it to be an apartheid state. They already know it's an apartheid state. My fear is always: What is it that's going to happen to people on the ground? And whether Israel annexes or whether they don't annex, the result for Palestinians is the same, that Israel is continuing this process of land theft, it's kicking people off their land, it's turning Palestinians into people who are homeless, and it's killing them, as well. This has long been its process, long been its system.

Now, it's not just the Israeli state that does this. It's not just the army, but it's also Israeli settlers. We've already seen that in all of these years, with all of these attacks that have been conducted by Israeli settlers against Palestinians, that rarely, if ever, is an Israeli settler ever prosecuted for their crimes, or rarely even charged for their crimes, much less see the full conviction. And this is because Israel has turned a blind eye towards violence that it perpetrates against Palestinians. But again, I don't expect anything differently from the Israeli state, nor do I expect anything differently from Israeli settlers. That is their raison d'être. That is their reason for being.

What I would have expected is that somehow the world community would have stood up and would have done something differently and begin to hold Israel accountable for its actions. It would have held the Israeli state, its soldiers and so on. And instead, we don't see it. For example, just this past year, a Palestinian American journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, who was also a friend, was murdered by Israel, by Israeli forces. Her death was probably the most investigated death that I've ever seen in all of my years of living here in Palestine, from everything from outlets from CNN to AP to The New York Times to NGOs and so on. And yet, to this current day, we still don't see that anybody has been held to account, even though we know that it was an Israeli soldier who shot and killed her.

And so, this is what it means to be living as a Palestinian, is that you're always living in the space where your life mean absolutely nothing and that your life could be extinguished at any moment, whether that happens at the hands of an Israeli soldier, whether it happens at the hands of an Israeli settler, or whether your land and your homes are demolished by the Israeli government. That's what it means to be living as a Palestinian.

AMY GOODMAN: And I want to encourage people to go to our website at democracynow.org, where we interviewed Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous, who did a documentary for Al Jazeera called The Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, and we also interviewed Shireen's niece, Lina. Diana Buttu, we want to thank you so much for being with us, Palestinian lawyer, former adviser to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organization. We'll link to your piece in The New York Times, "Israelis Have Put Benjamin Netanyahu Back in Power. Palestinians Will Surely Pay the Price." And Gideon Levy, Israeli journalist in Tel Aviv, columnist for the newspaper Haaretz and member of its editorial board."


Thursday, March 29, 2007

Kucinich for President

Gonzo Answers Three Questions at Press Conference
Then Runs




DENNIS KUCINICH FOR PRESIDENT



Of course, he will not even be nominated, but he is the only really sane one in the bunch so far.


Illustration 1: The Absurd Times editorial staff has decided to endorse Dennis Kucinich for President, thus ending all speculation.

Illustration 2: Contest: The Artistic Staff has suggested a contest: Who will be the next to go? Gonzo? Rove? Rice? Cheney? Winner gets a free illustration of Olmert. In fact, everyone gets one right now, voting or not. We want to be fair, after all. It seems Bush has stopped supporting him.

Some of what happened this week defies comment. Years ago, Max Horkheimer wrote The Eclipse of Reason. I believe we have seen its hospitalization.

Gonzales was asked if he would resign, and he said “no”.

When asked why he would stay, he said “for the children.” I kid you not. And he did it with a straight face! Gonzo’s Assistant testified this week, someone named Monica (always a Monica), but she took the fifth. After all, this is the justice department.

The Senate wanted testimony from Gonzales, Rove, and Meyers about the firing of the prosecutors. Bush offered a compromise: He will pick who gets to ask questions, what questions, no oath, a secret room, no tape, no transcript, no notes. The Senate then issued subpoenas. The Decider called it partisan.

A bill passed to fund the war, but it also said to end it. The Decider called it partisan and says he will veto it. The Democrats who voted against it didn’t want any funding at all. If he vetos it, he is denying the money our troops need (he says).

The European Union recognized the democratically elected government of Palestine. Israel and the U.S. will not, the wall is still being built, and members of the Palestinian Parliament are still locked up in Israeli prisons. Contrary to what is on our media, Israel will not accept the proposal from Saudia Arabia offering full recognition by 22 Arab states and full guarantees if only Israel obeys U.N. Resolution 242, withdrawal from occupied territories.

Iran captured 15 British warriors. Iran will continue its violation of a nuclear free Middle East. Israel has between 200 and 300 nuclear bombs.

The Senate joined the House in putting a deadline for the end of the war on the war-money bill.

Meanwhile, Iran said they would return the female prisoner, but the British said it had proof it was in Iraqi waters and speculation is that they will invade or try to liberate them by force. That would be insane, but that is not sufficient, let alone necessary, reason to stop Blair.

Meanwhile, the US has 10 warships and 100 jets in the “Persian Gulf,” buzzing around and making all sorts of maneuvers. Speculation is that our administration is trying to “send a message.” What is it with these “messages”? Can they not find a more cost-effective way of sending messages? E-mail, perhaps? A phone call?

The British offerred “proof” that they were in Iraqi waters, a photo of co-ordinates and a boat taken from a plane. I found it aboust as convincing as Colin Powell’s proof offerred at the U.N. that was used to start this who thing.

Oh yes, Pat Tillman’s mother stated that the Arizona Cardinals Cornerback was against the move to Iraq when we killed him and kept it quiet. This did not make the major news – she was interviewed on ESPN Radio on the Dan Patrick show.

An interview with Kucinich (#1, below) explains why he voted against the bill and what is really meant by universal health care, among other things.

1) An Interview with Dennis Kucinich. In case you miss it, his site is http://www.Kucinich.us

“This Isn’t American Idol, We’re Choosing the President of the United States” - Kucinich on Corporate Media Campaign Coverage

2) A Release by an activist group on Health Care.

Many good things are happening

by Marilyn Clement; Portside; March 24, 2007

3) A very detailed summary of human right and how valued they are.

ZNet | Human Rights

Richard Holbrooke, Samantha Power, and the “Worthy-Genocide” Establishment
(Kafka Era Studies Number 5)

by Edward S. Herman; March 24, 2007

1) “This Isn’t American Idol, We’re Choosing the President of the United States” - Kucinich on Corporate Media Campaign Coverage

Wednesday, March 28th, 2007

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/28/1335231

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D - OH) was one of eight Congressmembers to vote against the House war-spending bill last week that set a timetable for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. We go to Capitol Hill to speak with Kucinich about the bill, why he thinks impeachment “should be on the table,” the corporate media’s coverage of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination and more. [rush transcript included]


On Capitol Hill the Democratic-led Senate has moved closer to passing a war-spending bill that will give President Bush $100 billion more for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and also require U.S. combat troops to begin withdrawing from Iraq.

On Tuesday Republican lawmakers attempted to pass an amendment removing the troop withdrawal plan from the bill. But the amendment was defeated by a 50 to 48 vote after Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska voted with the Democrats on the measure.

President Bush has vowed to veto the legislation if it includes a timetable for withdrawal. Meanwhile, anti-war activists continue to pressure lawmakers to reject the bill as well because it allows for the war to continue for another year.

In Burlington Vermont, police arrested eight protesters yesterday after they refused to leave the offices of independent Sen. Bernie Sanders. Sanders has been a long-time opponent of the war but supports the spending bill.

Sanders said it would be counterproductive to vote against the spending bill. He said, “That would mean voting with the Bush Administration and congressional Republicans and handing a victory to those who want to continue and perhaps expand the war into neighboring countries.”

Last week eight anti-war Democrats voted against the supplemental spending bill when it came before the House. One of those lawmakers, Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, joins us from Capitol Hill. Congressman Kucinich is also running for the Democratic presidential nomination.

· Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D - OH)


RUSH TRANSCRIPT

This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
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AMY GOODMAN: Last week, eight anti-war Democrats voted against the supplemental spending bill when it came before the house. One of those lawmakers, Congress member Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, joins us from Capitol Hill. Congress member Kucinich is also running for the Democratic Presidential nomination. We welcome you to Democracy Now!, Congressman Kucinich.

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Good morning Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Good to have you with us. First of all, as you stand overlooking the capitol, talk about your vote against the war funding bill.

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, we were given false choices. We were told that we either buy into president Bush’s plan, which is keep the war going indefinitely, or accept the Democratic version of the war in Iraq, which would keep the war going for another year or two. I say those choices weren’t sufficient.

The Democrats could have refused to send a bill forward. We didn’t have to fund this war. We’re not under any obligation to keep the war going. And yet our leaders took another path. Furthermore, Amy, you may be interested to know that the 2008 budget, which is before Congress today and will be voted on tomorrow, contains another $145 billion for the war, and on top of that, they’re putting another $50 billion for the war in fiscal year 2009.

So this talk about ending the war by March or by September belies the fact that the budget has money in it to keep the war going into 2009. And I think that’s wrong. I think the American people will reject that type of thinking, and I’m standing strong to say get out now. I put forth a plan embodied in HR 1234. To accomplish just that.

AMY GOODMAN: But what do you say to those make the argument that if president Bush has on his desk a bill that gives money, gives a fortune in continuing the war, and he has to veto it because he doesn’t like the timetable, that this puts him in a very difficult position?

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Our decisions have to be way above politics. We have the lives of our troops at stake here. There’s no military victory in Iraq. We’re there illegally. The occupation is fueling the insurgency. Democrats can still, after president Bush vetoes the bill, which he will, Democrats can still take the right position, which is refuse to fund the war, use money in the pipeline to bring the troops home.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the pressure from the leadership, the Democratic Party, from the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, all of the stories going around of Congress members voting for the funding so that they could help out the spinach farmers, etc.?

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: On matters of war and peace, I think people have to vote their conscience. I can say I wasn’t pressured.

AMY GOODMAN: But what about those that were, and what about the spending bill going way beyond funding wars?

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: It’s a legitimate concern. I mean, if you’re for peace, you vote for peace. If you’re for peace, you don’t vote for war because somebody’s giving you a plum in a bill that’s designed to keep a war going. I think the American people want new leadership which understands that if you’re for peace, you vote for peace, you don’t fund wars.

And so I’m moving forward with a plan, it’s embodied in HR 1234 that would stop the funding and the occupation, close the bases, bring the troops home, and set in motion a parallel process that would stabilize Iraq with the help of the international community, which will only help, by the way, unless, you know, if the United States takes a new course and ends the occupation.

So my plan envisions that America will take a new direction. What’s happening right now, Amy, is we’re looking in this budget, and people, and Democrats that look at this budget today are going to be surprised to find out that our leaders are proposing keeping the war going into 2009.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me play a clip of you, of House Speaker—for you, of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushing for the passage of the supplemental spending bill. This was her comment after the bill passed.

HOUSE SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI: Proudly this new Congress voted to bring an end to the war in Iraq. It took one great, giant step in that direction. We voted “NO” to giving a blank check to an open-ended commitment, a war without end, to the President of the United States, and “Yes” to begin the end of the war and the redeployment of our troops.

AMY GOODMAN: I then want to play for you a clip of President Bush. President Bush’s comment after the House passed the spending bill last week.

PRESIDENT BUSH: This bill has too much pork, too many conditions, and an artificial timetable for withdrawal. As I made clear for weeks, I will veto if it comes to my desk. And because the vote in the House was so close, it is clear that my veto would be sustained. Today’s action in the House does only one thing, it delays the delivery of vital resources for our troops.

AMY GOODMAN: Congress member Dennis Kucinich, your response.

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, the Democrats’ position should have been and can still be, that we refuse to fund the war, that we don’t give this president a dime to keep the war going, that we use money in the pipeline to bring the troops home and set in motion a parallel process that would secure Iraq. We’re under no obligation to keep this war going.

But I would say, Amy, that if you look at the budget, which is facing Congress tomorrow, it provides not only $145 billion for fiscal year ‘08 for the war, for all of it, but another $50 billion for fiscal year 2009. I wonder how that squares with Democratic leaders’ position that they want to bring the troops home in March or in September of next year. There’s something that’s contradictory here.

So I’m going to try to see if I can reconcile that today in Congress by talking to leadership and alerting my fellow members that money is in the budget to keep this war going past President Bush’s term. President Bush has been very clear. He’s going to keep this war going through the end of his term. I say that American should get out now, that it’s not a choice between President Bush or keeping the war going another year, year and a half. We need to get out now, and we need to let the troops know we truly support them, by bringing them home.

AMY GOODMAN: Congressman Kucinich, what would getting out now look like? I mean, do you mean, for example, today, you begin the process, and when would the soldiers be home if—well, if you were president, Dennis Kucinich?

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: I crafted my plan with the help of the people at the UN, and I will tell you that they say that it would take about two months, three months to mobilize a sufficient force that would replace US Troops leaving. So I say two to three months we could have troops home and have an international force that would help stabilize Iraq. But the international community will not become involved as long as the United States intends to occupy Iraq and keep bases open. So we need to take a new direction.

My plan would be as follows: to put in place the provisions of HR 1234, which ends the occupation, closes the bases, sets in motion a plan to bring the troops home, bring in international peacekeepers, and stop the privatization of Iraq oil. One of the things in the bill that passed the House was a demand that the Iraq government pass a hydrocarbon act which sets the stage for broad privatization of trillions of dollars of Iraqi oil interests.

Now, think about it. If Democrats had told the American people last October that if you vote democrat in November, we’ll not only give you enough money to keep the war going through the end of President Bush’s term, but we’ll also privatize the oil of Iraq and then help the US oil companies win the prize that I think the war was all about from the very beginning. I don’t think the people would have voted Democrat. So Democrats have to keep faith with the American people.

My plan would do that, by returning full control of the Iraqi oil assets to the Iraqi people. Put in motion a plan for reconciliation between Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds, which cannot happen as long as the United States occupies. Provide for honest reconstruction, you know, none of these contractors from the US can be there. They’ve stolen money from the Iraqi people and also from the US taxpayers.

We have to give the Iraqi people jobs with Iraqi contractors doing the work. We have to provide for reparations so that we can pay money to the Iraqi people who have lost their homes or lost the lives of loved ones. We have to stabilize energy and food prices. And when Iraq goes to the international community, make sure that Iraq doesn’t suffer from the structural readjustment provisions of the IMF or the World Bank.

AMY GOODMAN: Your response, Congress member Kucinich to Halliburton saying they’re moving to Dubai?

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, I think the honest thing would be to have a good Attorney General call Halliburton in and start the questioning of them about their conduct, and I think that they should not be immune from prosecution simply because they’re moving to Dubai.

AMY GOODMAN: We continue with Dennis Kucinich from Ohio, Democratic Presidential hopeful. He is standing right outside the Capitol right now. You mentioned Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. What do you think should happen to him?

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: It’s very clear that the Justice Department has become so politicized that it cannot function in the interests of the American people. The honorable thing would be for Mr. Gonzales to resign.

AMY GOODMAN: And if he doesn’t resign, should he be fired? Should the President fire him?

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, I don’t think that’s going to happen. I think he’s doing what the President has asked him to do. The question here is what’s his sense of honor about his responsibility to the law and to the American people. That’s going to be his decision.

AMY GOODMAN: Speaking of the President, what do you think should happen to President Bush? Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, said that impeachment is off the table. What are your thoughts?

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: I don’t think that it’s wise for the House and the Congress, for co-equal branches of government, to essentially give the President carte blanche in his decision making by saying no matter what you do, impeachment is off the table. I think that impeachment has to be on the table, and I also think that it’s time to have a national conversation in cities, in towns all over America about the appropriate conduct for a President and a Vice President, about whether it’s right for a President and Vice President to lie to the American people and take us into war. About the erosion of civil rights in America and how that’s come about as a result of this administration’s conduct of the war.

I think that it’s time to have that kind of a discussion, and I’ve urged that from my website at kucinich.us, and I’m asking to hear from people about what they think, and I think that we need to make sure that this President understands that he can’t do whatever he wants, that he is bound by the constitution, that he is bound by national and international law.

AMY GOODMAN: Congressman Kucinich, you’ve mentioned the word treason. What do you mean?

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: I don’t think I mentioned the word treason.

AMY GOODMAN: Have you talked about President Bush and treason?

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: No, I’ve never—I never mentioned the word treason. I do think that accountability is a key word here. And I think the President and the Vice President must be held accountable. That’s why I think it’s a mistake for anyone to say impeachment is off the table. At the same time, we have to take a responsibility as members of Congress to uphold the constitution of the United States. That’s our obligation as a co-equal branch of government.

So I’m waiting to hear from the American people. I would ask people who are listening or watching to go to my website at: www.kucinich.us. I’d like to hear from you. What do you think? Should the House move forward with a resolution of impeachment and what do you think the dimensions of it should be? I want to hear from the American people on this.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think of the Center for Constitutional Rights going to Germany to file a complaint against former Congress member—or rather, former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld? It’s not only against him, it’s against Alberto Gonzales, it’s against General Sanchez and Miller for torture, over the issue of torture.

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: I think that all members of this administration, including the President, the Vice President, and all the other officials you mentioned, should be held accountable under international law, and that that accountability does not expire with the expiration of the term of this President. America at some point is going to have to restore its moral equilibrium, which has been lost, because this administration took us into a war based on lies. They all have to be held accountable. They must be held accountable, not only under national, but international law.

AMY GOODMAN: When you came to the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis, you talked about holding hearings around the FCC, heading up a committee that is responsible for the FCC, I think it’s the Domestic Policy Subcommittee the House Oversight on Government Reform Committee. What do you plan to do?

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, our committee just started its work last week. The Domestic Policy Subcommittee has jurisdiction over the Federal Communications Commission. It’s been 20 years since we’ve had and hearings at all on the Fairness Doctrine. It’s been a long time since Congress has held hearings on the concentration in the electronic media.

And so I want to proceed with hearings sometime in the next few months that would review the—those animating principles of the FCC embodied in the Federal Communications Act of 1934, and that is that the electronic media shall serve in the public interest, convenience, and necessity. I want to hold that up and see if today’s conditions corresponds to what it was that gave the public the inclination to cause electronic media to be licensed and if the licensees have kept faith with the American people.

AMY GOODMAN: Congress member Kucinich, you also just returned from New York, where you held a news conference on universal healthcare. How does your plan differ from, for example, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the New York Senator, also Democratic hopeful – Presidential hopeful, also said she supports universal healthcare.

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, it differs in every way. Everyone in this campaign is for universal healthcare. But what Senator Clinton, Senator Edwards, and others are talking about is having the insurance companies still in charge of healthcare, of having the government subsidize the insurance companies or forcing people to buy insurance or have the government subsidize the purchase of insurance.

Look, the President of the United States shouldn’t be an insurance salesman. The President should stand for a position where everyone is covered, that’s what my bill does. The Conyers-Kucinich Bill, HR 676, Medicare for all, it ends for-profit medicine, it is a single-payer system which recognizes we’re spending $2.2 trillion a year on healthcare, but 31% of that, or $660 billion, goes for the activities of the for-profit system.

Take that money, put it into healthcare, and you have enough money to cover every medical need, including dental care, vision care, mental health, prescription drug, and long-term care. Healthcare is a right, it’s not a privilege. Senator Clinton’s plan helps the insurance companies, it keeps the for-profit system going, and my plan ends the for-profit system and uses the savings to provide healthcare for everyone.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think of the media coverage of the Democratic Presidential race right now? A lot of attention on both Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Senator Obama and Clinton. Of course, last time you also ran for president, and there was a major issue the day after you took Ted Koppel to task at ABC for asking questions about polls and money as opposed to issues on your positions. The next day, the so-called embedded reporter in your campaign was pulled, the ABC reporter. What about the coverage now?

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: My concern wasn’t so much whether reporters were embedded in my campaign, as much as it was the fact that mainstream media reports were embedded with the war. But as far as my own campaign, look, I’m bringing issues forth to the American people. We’re organizing in places like New Hampshire, where the Democratic Party just came out in favor of single-payer healthcare, not for profit. My campaign is about organizing door-to-door and grass roots fundraising, and people who want to get involved can go to kucinich.us and help us.

I’m not going to be on my knees begging for attention from the mainstream media. They have to realize that they have a responsibility as broadcast licensees to provide coverage to all the candidates. After all, this isn’t “American idol”, we’re choosing a President of the United States. The American people have a right to a substantive discussion about those issues that affect their lives, such as war and peace, such as poverty and prosperity, healthcare for all, or keep the insurance companies in business in healthcare.

We need a new discussion, and I appreciate the chance to be on Democracy Now!, because I know your audience is an audience of people with principle, of activism, and I’m confident that when they hear what I stand for, they’ll be interested in joining this campaign.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, President Kucin—finally, Congress member Kucinich, the men and women who have gone AWOL, there have been thousands of them, some are being court-martialed, like Lieutenant Aaron Witada will be court-martialed again. It was a mistrial in his first trial, first Officer to say no to war, to deployment to Iraq. What do you think should happen to these men? Augustine Aguayo, an Army medic who applied for CO status, didn’t get it, and is now in prison in Germany. Do you support their saying “no”? Do you support their refusing to go to Iraq or redeploy to Iraq?

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: I support the troops who serve and also those who don’t feel it’s right to serve. I think we have to ask our troops to be able to reserve the right of their conscience, and if they feel it’s the right thing to go forward, then we support that. If they feel it’s not the right thing, we should support that, too. I think we’re in a point in the history of this country where many people have looked at the war and realized that it’s wrong. Some of those people are soldiers. Soldiers are put in an impossible situation, not only those who are committed to serving in Iraq, but also those who know that the war is wrong and who question the war. I think we have to love our troops, whatever situation they find themselves in. And the way to support them is to bring them home.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think they should be court-martialed?

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: You know, I don’t think that anyone who’s taken a principles and conscientious position should be subject to a court-martial. They should be permitted to leave the service if they so desire, but not be forced through that kind of a process. I think, you know, there has to be an underlying truth here, and the underlying truth is the war was wrong, period. The war is based on lies. We should support our troops by bringing them home, and we should support those who have challenged the war by giving them a chance to leave honorably.

AMY GOODMAN: Congress member Kucinich, I want to thank you for joining us from the Capitol. Ohio Congress member and Democratic Presidential hopeful.

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Thank you Amy.

www.democracynow.org

2)

ZNet | Social Policy

Many good things are happening

by Marilyn Clement; Portside; March 24, 2007

Many good things are happening across the nation as the single payer movement continues to develop. People ask the question, ‘How could this have happened? How is it that there is only one healthcare plan in the nation that has a huge constituency of support? And we know the answer. It is because of your work. Here are some of the exciting developments in the single payer movement:

1. We now have 62 co-sponsors of H.R. 676 in just two months following its reintroduction in this new Congress—as a result of your efforts.

2. The AFL-CIO has joined us as an endorser of single payer.

How did this happen? It happened because of the movement of

local unions from the bottom up who studied the bill, endorsed

it, and urged the AFL-CIO to join us over the past eighteen

months. One volunteer, Kay Tillow, has worked tirelessly to make

this happen.

3. Act-Up has joined us - one ofthe most militant organizations in the U.S. -the group that challenged Congress and the healthcare agencies to do the research and help to stem the tide of the AIDS epidemic in the 80’s and 90’s. Now they have made single payer, national healthcare their #1 issue.

4. The National Organization for Women has formally endorsed.

5. Newspapers all over the country are studying the issue, and many are endorsing. City councils are signing on. Two state democratic parties, New Hampshire and Washington State have endorsed single payer and will be pushing the national Democrats to move forward toward single payer in the coming election.

6. We met with the New York Times this week in a very good exchange on the issue.

7. And Congressman Conyers is planning a briefing for Congress members and the public on April 24th in Washington, D.C. YOU ARE INVITED. Be in touch with joel.segal@mail.house.gov for more details.

One of the friends of single payer in the U.S. Congress is

Maurice Hinchey. In addition to being a strong endorser of H.R.

676, he has introduced legislation that has forced the FDA to

create new rules to protect us from the drug profiteers. When we

achieve a national single payer system in the United States, we

will have a system where the single payer (probably Medicare)

will negotiate the cost of all drugs for all of us and have a

strong mechanism for protecting our people.

We will have several elements of good business practices as a

part of our national healthcare program including ‘negotiating

prices,’ ‘eliminating the unnecessary middle man (the insurance

companies)’ and ‘purchasing in bulk’both durable medical

equipment and prescription drugs since there will be 300 million

of us in one large purchasing pool. This will be another of the

great savings that will provide us with a quality healthcare

system for all without spending any additional money.

Businesses, employees and employers will all save money. No more co-pays or deductibles and no more denials and out-of- pocket expenses for necessary medical care.

Hinchey’s legislation and the FDA’s response are described in

today’s story. F.D.A. Rule Limits Role of Advisers Tied to

Industry. The new rules would bar government advisers who

receive money from a drug or device maker from voting on that

company’s products.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/22/washington/22fda.html?th&emc=th

As the story notes, this is not the ultimate solution to the problem of FDA complicity with the drug profiteers,but it is a start.

H.R. 676, Conyers’ United States National Health Insurance Act,

is the only bill in Congress that pushes for a non-profit

national healthcare system that will serve us all. It is the

only bill among the many that have been introduced recently and

among the state bills that are being considered that eliminates

the role of the insurance companies, both in government-funded

programs such as Medicare and SCHIP (the child healthcare

program) and in the healthcare fund that will provide excellent

healthcare to all of us.

As a result of the elimination of the insurance companies’ role

in healthcare, we will be able to cover one-third more

healthcare. In other words, we could cover one-third more

children if we didn’t have insurance companies in the middle of

the SCHIP program. We can cover one-third more people in the

United States and provide 100% better benefits for all of us

with H.R. 676.

Under single payer, H.R. 676, we will eliminate the waiting

lines that keep about 50 million of our people suffering and

dying, and we will be able to provide much better benefits,

doctors who don’t have to spend their time satisfying hundreds

of insurance companies, hospitals that don’t have to spend

billions of dollars on exacting payment for hundreds of

insurance, government and individual payers, mental healthcare,

drug and alcohol treatment for all who need it; payment for

prescription drugs; long-term care (how many of us have no

long-term care insurance now?) and more. Everybody in; nobody out!’

Here are some of the things that you can do immediately to push

forward real single payer legislation, H.R. 676. See more ideas

at our website www.healthcare-now.org

1. Visit the editorial board of your newspaper;

2. Send letters to the editors and to columnists and writers of newspapers nationwide including the New York Times editorial board;

3. Get on the list for newspaper articles on a daily basis (write joykal1@aol.com)

4. HOLD AN EVENT or HEARING this coming month (APRIL) or soon in your neighborhood or state (See guidelines for organizing on our website.

http://www.healthcare-now.org/action/how_to.htm.

INVITE YOUR CONGRESS MEMBER. But don’t wait on Congress. It is

the people’s movement rising up from the bottom that will get us

a national single payer healthcare system. No Congress or

Presidential candidate is going to provide us with the

healthcare system weneed without our massive efforts;

5. Call us for organizing suggestions. 1-800-453-1305 ; info@healthcare-now.org;

6. Make a contributionto Healthcare-NOW- now! Get a free book.

We really need your support NOW.

https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=2264;

7. Order beautiful Martin Luther King, Jr National Healthcare

Month posters and our ‘Improved Medicare for All’ booklet in

Spanish or English. Bulk copies from our printers.

priority press@optonline.org;

8. Plan to VISIT YOUR MEMBER of CONGRESS in his/her local office during the first two weeks of April. Thank your members if they have signed onto H.R. 676. Insist that they do so if they have not;

9. Call or Fax Congressman Pete Stark’s office to be sure that

H.R. 676 is a part of the agenda for his healthcare hearings in

May. Phone: (202) 225-5065; Fax: (202) 226-3805;

10. Get your City Council, State Legislature, Democratic or

Republican State Committee, Union, Faith Community, Club,

Community Organization or Local Business to endorse H.R. 676.

See the growing list of endorsers at

http://www.healthcare-now.org/endorse676.php:

11. Get a copy of John Conyers’ inspirational 6 minute dvd

‘Giant Steps’from Healthcare-NOW. See it on You Tube.

12. See our homepage to read about or use the power point about the problems with all of the other proposals being offered www.Healthcare-now.org.

Remember ‘We are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For.’

Marilyn Clement, NationalCoordinator

Healthcare-NOW

www.healthcare-now.org

1-800-453-1305

info@healthcare-now.org

* * *

3.

ZNet | Human Rights

Richard Holbrooke, Samantha Power, and the “Worthy-Genocide” Establishment
(Kafka Era Studies Number 5)

by Edward S. Herman; March 24, 2007

It may seem odd to speak of a worthy-genocide establishment, with Richard Holbrooke and Samantha Power as notable members, but we are living in the Kafka era, when major genocidists and their friends and allies can get very passionate and even win Pulitzer Prizes for their denunciation of some genocides and “problems from hell” while actually facilitating, ignoring and apologizing for others. [1] Worthy genocides are those mass killings carried out by bad people, notably U.S. enemies and targets, and they receive great attention and elicit much passion; the unworthy ones are carried out by the United States or one of its client states, and they receive little attention or indignation and are not labelled genocides, even where the scale of killings greatly exceeds those so designated, obviously based on political utility. As the United States is an aggressive superpower that has been “projecting power” and opposing popular and revolutionary movements on a global scale since World War II, a very good case can be made that the unworthy genocides that it has carried out or supported have been predominant over the past half century—that it has been the source of more “problems from hell” than any other state.

It follows that a man like Richard Holbrooke, who has been a part of the U.S. foreign policy establishment for over 40 years, is likely to have been a participant in the genocides that have taken place during that period. Thus, while Holbrooke regularly speaks and gets a warm welcome from the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard and from Human Rights Watch, [2] we should recall that he was an official of the U.S. government during the Vietnam war era, from 1962 through 1969; he was the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs in charge of Indonesian relations during the Carter administration, and during the worst and most genocidal phase of Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor in 1977-1978. He was also an official of the Clinton administration, and eventually the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, in the years when the United States was enforcing the “sanctions of mass destruction” on Iraq.

If we measure “genocide” by the numbers deliberately and intentionally killed and the threat these actions pose to the survival of the target population, all three of these episodes in which Holbrooke was involved qualify for inclusion. In the case of Vietnam, as Noam Chomsky has pointed out, given the lack of U.S. establishment interest in Vietnamese casualties the actual number killed is uncertain within the range of millions, but serious estimates run up to three million or more dead, unknown millions more injured or traumatized, a land devastated and widely ruined by bombs and chemicals, and as late as 1997 an estimated 500,000 children mentally or physically deformed as a result of ruthless chemical warfare. [3] Indonesia’s invasion-occupation resulted in the death of an estimated 200,000 East Timorese out of a total population of approximately 800,000, or a quarter of the total. The sanctions of mass destruction imposed on Iraq by the UN under U.S. influence and pressure resulted in the deaths of probably a million or more people, only some 6 percent of the total, but an absolutely very large number—ten times the total killed in Bosnia in the years 1992-1995. The two most famous quotes regarding these Iraq sanctions are those of Holbrooke’s boss Madeleine Albright, telling Leslie Stahl on CBS in 1996 that the price of the sanctions, 500,000 dead children, was “worth it;” the other quote, by John and Karl Mueller, in Foreign Affairs in June 1999, was that the sanctions of mass destruction “may well have been a necessary cause of the deaths of more people in Iraq than have been slain by all so-called weapons of mass destruction throughout history.”

Holbrooke was only a lesser official during the Vietnam war era, but on the basis of principles laid down by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) whereby participants in a “joint criminal enterprise” (JCE) will be found guilty if they pursued a military-political end in common with other criminals, [4] Holbrooke would easily qualify. His role as a genocidist is far clearer in the East Timor case where he was the highest State Department official dealing with Indonesia and its East Timor occupation, visiting with Suharto and other Indonesian leaders while the fields were being strewn with dead bodies, and helping implement a policy that aided the genocide. During his tenure Indonesian terror and killings reached their peaks, in the years 1977 and 1978, and during that time the United States continued its support of Indonesia and did nothing to curb the violence. In testimony before Congress on December 4, 1979, Holbrooke lied about the origins of the war and Indonesian responsibility for the deaths, telling Congress that the “welfare of the Timorese people is the major objective of our policy toward East Timor”—a blatant falsehood—and he gave congress a highly favorable portrayal of the genocidal state. [5] U.N. Security Council resolutions condemned Jakarta’s invasion and occupation, but the Carter-Holbrooke team provided Jakarta with advanced counter-insurgency aircraft, which the Indonesian military employed to bomb and napalm the East Timorese, as well as diplomatic protection and steady apologetics for a genocidal pacification progam. No UN Security Council resolution was adopted regarding East Timor after April 22, 1976, through the rest of the Carter administration, despite the escalated killings in the years after 1976. An Australian parliamentary report later described the period as one of “indiscriminate killing on a scale unprecedented in post-World War II history.” [6]

Holbrooke’s role in the initiation and management of the further burst of U.S. organized and supported genocide with the sanctions of mass destruction in Iraq is less clear than in the East Timor case, but he was a high official in the Clinton administration from 1993 onward, and from 1999-2001 was the U.S. Ambassador to the UN. At the least he would qualify as a member of a JCE helping inflict a genocide on Iraq.

It is of course revealing that Richard Holbrooke is a favorite at the Carr Center (see the photo below, with Samantha Power, a former Carr official, and Sarah Sewell, its current Executive Director, casting admiring glances at this notable genocidist) as well as with Human Right Watch. After all, there is the record just noted, and Holbrooke being a former official with continuing political aspirations, may not tell the truth, so that he is someone a human rights group should keep at arms length in order to maintain its independence and integrity. But in the United States, self-righeousness is so great that such principles are unrecognized in the mainstream. Back in the 1980s when the alleged (but false) Bulgarian-KGB link to the shooting of Pope John Paul II was a big issue, Paul Henze, a 30-year CIA veteran and former CIA station chief in Turkey was a major “expert” tapped by the media, who never once suggested any doubts about Henze’s possible bias and compromised credentials as a source. We are so good and right that our high officials and spooks can be trusted to speak unbiased truth, at least for the mainstream media and the Carr Center and HRW.

But in reality, what the warm and collegial Holbrooke link suggests is that the Carr Center and HRW are members of the establishment and will surely speak only partial truths at best. As its name suggests the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy is policy oriented. But it is certainly not oriented to policy assistance for groups and countries under U.S. attack. A dead giveaway is the fact that its current Executive Director, Sarah Sewall, has been a consultant to the Pentagon and is a specialist in counter-insurgency warfare (see her Modernizing U.S. Counterinsurgency Practice,” Military Review, Sept./Oct., 2006). As a Pentagon consultant, and with other Carr linkages to the government and military establishment, there is no way that Sewall and her associates are going to look objectively at U.S. human rights violations and criticize them in no uncertain terms. They premise the U.S. right to intervene across the globe, their function being to bring it into line with humanitarian principles! (As regards one of its major program areas a Carr description states that: “Ultimately, the project aims to affect the way nations intervene militarily, making the use of military power more consistent with humanitarian principles.”) By the nature of their linkages and rule Carr is going to gloss over U.S. violations of the UN Charter and human rights abuses. It cannot bring in Richard Holbrooke as an honored guest, Samantha Power cannot hold a joint seminar with him at Carr, and Carr cannot attract guest speakers like Central Command General Abizaid, while maintaining any kind of less-than-collegial relationship with government.

In fact, the Carr Center has a relationship with the government very similar to that of various institutes that have dealt with “terrorism.” In a study of the “terrorism industry” in which I engaged some years back, some of the clearest findings were the extent to which that industry’s definitions of terrorism and policy focus coincided with those of the government, and the regularity with which its members served the state and private parties in need of “security” protection from retail terrorists—who were often under siege by state (wholesale) terrorists. [7] It was very clear that Guatemalan peasants being murdered by the genocidal Guatemalan state or members of the African National Congress (ANC) or Angolans under attack by the South African apartheid government were never going to be advised by members of the industry. But the governments attacking them were advised, and those governments were also being serviced at the same time by the U.S. government. The peasants under attack were the “terrorists” and the governments engaging in very serious state terror were, in the Western establishment lexicon, engaging in “counter-terror.” [8] The South African “Terrorism Research Centre” had collegial relations with U.S. and British terrorism research groups and with the CIA, Mossad, and M-16, and the latter three were also closely aligned. The Pentagon defined the ANC as one of “the more notorious terrorism groups,” and terrorism analysts such as Clair Sterling, Paul Wilkinson, Robert Kupperman, Brian Crozier, and Walter Laqueur all worked with the same system of definitions and toward the same ends. Sewall, Power, Holbrooke and General Abizaid are also using similar definitions and working toward the same ends.

One test of the integrity of a human rights group is how it treats aggression by its own government. Given that the U.S. government has carried out major attacks against three countries in the past decade in violation of the UN Charter—the “supreme international crime” according to the Nuremberg Tribunal—the Carr Center and its leaders, like the ICTY and Human Rights Watch, have failed this test by simply ignoring the matter. Similarly, with their government openly engaged in systematic torture at multiple sites across the globe, and using “extraordinary rendition” as a means of supplementary torture, this awkward circumstance has also been dealt with by virtual silence. Carr’s former Director Michael Ignatieff was notorious for positively supporting all three supreme crimes, the first with great enthusiasm, and he was also fairly understanding on the demand for torture in the face of the terrorist threat. [9] Writing on Iraq, and as discussed further below, Carr Center head Sewall and Samantha Power never mention that the United States is an aggressor and that its invasion-occupation of Iraq was a “supreme international crime” in violation of the UN Charter. As with Ignatieff, for Sewall and Power this country has aggression rights.

Another key test of institutional integrity is whether an institution’s leaders are able to maintain some objectivity on official goals or simply premise good intentions. Ignatieff wrote the classic here, asserting that the United States was in Iraq simply to bring democracy and liberate its people, without offering any evidence but the fact that Bush made this claim. [10] Any materialistic or political objective he ruled out in an act of faith. Sara Sewall also simply postulates without any evidence that the Iraq aggression is the “grandest of democratic experiments,” a “liberation from dictatorship by a foreign intervention” that “looks astonishingly humane” in the light of the “hundreds of thousands in Vietnam and Korea,” etc. [11] As with Ignatieff, Sewall never hints at any possible non-benevolent objective in the invasion, never suggests that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and company, constructing huge bases in Iraq and with early plans for opening up Iraq’s oil resources to private investors, might have been planning for a less-than-fully-democratic successor regime in Iraq.

Sewall as well as Power also fails the test of integrity in her use of numbers. There were far more than “hundreds of thousands” killed in the U.S. wars in Vietnam and Korea, and they were hardly attempts to liberate those countries from dictatorship—in fact the regime in southern Vietnam was a brutal U.S.-imposed dictatorship that matched that of Saddam Hussein for savagery. Her claim that only 30,000 Iraqi deaths would make the invasion-occupation “astonishingly humane” rests in part on her assumption that the Iraq venture is truly liberating Iraqis, an unconscionable and untenable apologetic premise; it also rests on the assumptions that removal of a distant dictatorship by violence in violation of the UN Charter is not only acceptable but is the only way in which such political change could be brought about. Sewall also criticizes both the Lancet study that found 100,000 Iraqi civilian deaths by December 2004 and the Iraq Body Count estimates, stressing the alleged methodological inadequacy of the former and the finding by IBC that the United States may have been responsible for fewer than 40 percent of the deaths; so that “maybe the number isn’t so overwhelming after all.” For Sewall, “the numbers suggest a different character” [than Americans as “trigger-happy cowboys”]. Sewall hasn’t commented as yet on the later findings of perhaps 650,000 to a million civilian deaths in Iraq, [12] and she steers clear of the multi-leveled evidence that her leaders have brought a catastrophe to that country, [13] but I have no doubt she will find the larger numbers and evidence of a major disaster, if not showing astonishing humanity, surely not any basis for harsh criticism of a noble effort.

Samantha Power’s A Problem From Hell: America in the Age of Genocide, is notable for its intense focus and great indignation at the killings by Serbs in Bosnia and Kosovo, where she came in touch with Holbrooke who, Power tells us, “was transformed by firsthand exposure to a crime scene,” in Bosnia [14]--but oddly enough not in East Timor, where no doubt coincidentally the killers were being protected by U.S. leaders, including Holbrooke himself. Power gives the figure of 200,000 dead in Bosnia, 1992-1995, and she uses the word “genocide” for those killings. She doesn’t break down the Bosnian deaths between the various ethnic groups and soldiers versus civilians, and the later finding by two establishment research groups that total deaths on all sides, civilian and military, was about 100,000, suggests further questions about her preoccupation with this area. Sewall of course could find 30,000 Iraqi deaths and 300,000 U.S. deaths under analogous circumstances a triumph of humanity, given the nobility of the aims of the responsible party (in the Iraq case, her government); well under 100,000 can be a “problem from hell” for Power, given her (extremely biased and lightweight) analysis that finds the villain to be her government’s target.

As regards numbers in Kosovo, Samantha Power tells us that:

As high as the death toll turned out [in Kosovo in 1999], it was far lower than if NATO had not acted at all. After years of avoiding confrontation, the United States and its allies likely saved hundreds of thousands of lives. In addition, although prospective and retrospective critics of U.S. intervention have long cited the negative side effects likely to result, the NATO campaign ushered in some very positive unintended consequences. Indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal for Serbia’s atrocities in Operation Horseshoe and defeated in battle, Slobodan Milosevic became even more vulnerable at home. [15]

There isn’t an honest or undeceptive sentence in this paragraph. The death toll from the war in Kosovo was not high—it was under 8,000 on all sides, and Power fails to mention that during the war NATO officials claimed a Kosovo Albanian death toll of up to 500,000. Her statement that it would have been higher if NATO hadn’t acted has no basis in any evidence, as the death toll in the year before the war was an estimated 2,000, and Operation Horseshoe has been proven to be an intelligence agency fraud that Power swallowed. She also fails to mention that George Robertson, the NATO Secretary -General, admitted that the KLA was responsible for more deaths in Kosovo in the year before the bombing war than the Yugoslav army (that is, more than half of the estimated 2,000); [16] nor does she mention that the CIA was training and advising the KLA in that prewar period and giving it reason to believe that its provocations of the Serbs might help bring about a NATO attack. On unintended consequences, Power fails to mention that while Clinton claimed that the war objective was to create a ”tolerant and multi-ethnic Kosovo,” it had the opposite effect—it stimulated intolerance, resulted in the “largest ethnic cleansing [in proportionate terms] in the Balkan wars,” and left a fear-ridden, mafia-dominated Kosovo that is the drug and women-trade capital of Europe.

In short, Samantha Power can identify with Holbrooke because they both follow the U.S. party line on worthy and unworthy genocides. As the United States was directly involved in the great Vietnam genocide, as its leaders were part of the “joint criminal enterprise” with Indonesia in East Timor, and as they were mainly responsible for the “sanctions of mass destruction” and those 500,000 dead children whose deaths were “worth it” for Albright, Samantha Power evades these cases. Thus the Vietnam war, in which millions were directly killed by U.S. forces, does not show up in Power’s index or text. Guatemala, where there was a mass killing of as many as 100,000 Mayan Indians between 1978 and 1985, in what Amnesty International called “A Government Program of Political Murder,” but by a government installed and supported by the United States, also does not show up in Power’s index. Cambodia is of course included, but only for the second phase of the genocide—the first phase, from 1969-1975, in which the United States dropped some 500,000 tons of bombs on the Cambodian countryside and killed vast numbers, she fails to mention. On the Khmer Rouge genocide, Power says they killed 2 million, a figure widely cited after Jean Lacouture gave that number; his subsequent admission that this number was invented had no affect on its use, and it suits Power’s purpose.

A major U.S.-encouraged and supported genocide occurred in Indonesia in 1965-66 in which over 700,000 people were murdered. This genocide is not mentioned by Samantha Power and the names Indonesia and Suharto do not appear in her book’s index. She also fails to mention West Papua, where Indonesia’s 40 years of murderous occupation would constitute genocide under her criteria, if carried out under different auspices. Power does refer to East Timor, with extreme brevity, saying that “In 1975, when its ally, the oil-producing, anti-Communist Indonesia, invaded East Timor, killing between 100,000 and 200,000 civilians, the United States looked away.” [17] That exhausts her treatment of the subject, although the killings in East Timor involved a larger fraction of the population than in Cambodia, and the numbers killed were far larger than the grand total for Bosnia and Kosovo, to which she devotes almost a third of her book

She also misrepresents the U.S. role in East Timor—it did not “look away,” it gave its approval, protected the aggression from any effective UN response (in his autobiography, then U.S. Ambassador to the UN Daniel Patrick Moynihan bragged about his effectiveness in protecting Indonesia from any UN action), [18] and greatly increased its arms aid to Indonesia, thereby facilitating the genocide. And her pal Richard Holbrooke was also on the front line in servicing this genocide.

Power engages in a similar suppression and failure to recognize the U.S. role in her treatment of genocide in Iraq. She attends carefully and at length to Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical warfare and killing of Kurds at Halabja and elsewhere, and she does discuss the U.S. failure to oppose and take any action against Saddam Hussein at this juncture. But she does not mention the diplomatic rapproachement with Saddam in the midst of his war with Iran in 1983, the active U.S. logistical support of Saddam during that war, and the U.S. approval of sales and transfers of chemical and biological weapons during the period in which he was using chemical weapons against the Kurds. She also doesn’t mention the active efforts by the United States and Britain to block UN actions that might have obstructed Saddam’s killings.

The killing of over a million Iraqis via the “sanctions of mass destruction” is unmentioned by Samantha Power. Again, the correlation between exclusion, U.S. responsibility, and the view that such killings were “worth it” from the standpoint of U.S. interests, is clear. There is a similar political basis for Power’s failure to include Israel’s low-intensity genocide of the Palestinians and South Africa’s “destructive engagement” with the frontline states in the 1980s, the latter with a death toll greatly exceeding all the deaths in the Balkan wars of the 1990s. [19] Neither Israel nor South Africa, both “constructively engaged” by the United States, show up in Power’s index.

Power is concerned about genocide in Iraq today and wrote recently on how to bring it to a halt (“How to stop genocide in Iraq,” Los Angeles Times, March 5, 2007). But nowhere does she mention that the mass killing that has taken place in Iraq traces back to the U.S. invasion in violation of the UN Charter; nowhere does she mention that the killing has grown in parallel with the occupation and occupation policies; nowhere does she mention Fallujah and other cases of mass killing for which her leaders are responsible; and nowhere does she hint at the possibility that the United States has stimulated ethnic conflict as part of a divide and rule strategy. When Bush claims to be “surging” in the interest of stability and to reduce conflict, Power never contests this or suggests some alternative explanation. Somebody better informed on Iraq like the exile Sami Ramadani writes that “It is hard not to presume that what he [Bush] means by an exit strategy is to install a client regime in Baghdad, backed by US bases. The Iraqi people will not accept this, and the west should be alerted to the fact that US policy objectives will only lead to wider regional conflicts, rather than to full withdrawal.” [20] Samantha Power cannot formulate or admit such a critical analysis.

When Power talks about “atrocities” it is always indigenous forces that engage in them, not the U.S. occupation. She has always been gung-ho on bringing people responsible for atrocities to justice, and here in Iraq too she says that if the United States is serious about ending sectarian horrors, it “must send a clear signal to the militias and political leaders who carry out or order atrocities that they will be brought to justice for their crimes” In a 2003 article Power even asserts that although the rationale for the invasion had proven to be in error, it might still be justified because it would ensure that bad men would be brought to “justice” (“How to Try Saddam Hussein,” New Republic, Dec. 29, 2003). But she didn’t mean the U.S. officials who had colluded with and supported Saddam Hussein when he carried out his worst crimes in the 1980s; nor the U.S. officials who invaded Iraq in the “supreme international crime,” who destroyed Falluja and have surely killed many more civilians than her favorite Serb targets did in Kosovo and Bosnia taken together. Again, her country has aggression rights, and she tells us that what is happening in Iraq is taking place “on our watch.” Milosevic in Kosovo was operating in his own country, but he didn’t have “his own watch” there—but Power’s country has its “own watch” anywhere it chooses to invade and kill.

Samantha Power’s conclusion is that the U.S. policy toward genocide has been very imperfect and needs reorientation, less opportunism, and greater vigor. For Power, the United States is the solution, not the problem. These conclusions and policy recommendations rest heavily on her spectacular bias in case selection: She simply bypasses those that are ideologically inconvenient, where the United States has arguably committed genocide (Vietnam, Cambodia 1969-75, Iraq 1991-2003), or has given genocidal processes positive support (Indonesia, West Papua, East Timor, Guatemala, Israel, Angola, Mozambique, and South Africa). Looking at these cases, and at the “problem from hell” produced by the United States in Iraq right now, one would quickly conclude that the United States is the problem, not the solution, that it has been the leading source of hellishness, and that the real challenge for the world is to contain the United States and terminate its genocidal actions and support.

What is astounding is that Power’s book could win a Pulitzer Prize and that a thinker of this caliber and with these biases would become an icon in great demand, even welcomed in The Nation and Le Monde Diplomatique. But then we must recall that Thomas Friedman and George Will have won Pulitzers; Claire Sterling and Paul Henze were media stars commenting on terrorism; Joan Peters’ fraudulent From Time Immemorial received raves in the mainstream and Alan Dershowitz, literally plagiarizing the Peters fraud in his The Case for Israel, is still treated with respect; and Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton and Richard Holbrooke are celebrated speakers, with Holbrooke honored by both the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and Human Rights Watch.

End Notes:

1. Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 2002). This book won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction in 2003.

2. On Holbrooke’s treatment at HRW, see Edward S. Herman, David Peterson, and George Szamuely, Human Rights Watch in Service to the War Party, Including A Review of “Weighing the Evidence: Lessons from the Slobodan Milosevic Trial” (Human Rights Watch, December, 2006), ZNet, February 25, 2007.

3. Peter Waldman, “Body Count: In Vietnam, the Agony of Birth Defects Calls an Old War to Mind,” Wall Street Journal, Dec. 12, 1997.

4. “Joint criminal enterprise” is described in John Laughland’s chapter 6, “Just Convict Everyone,” in Travesty: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic and the Corruption of International Justice (London: Pluto, 2007).

5. See Noam Chomsky, Toward A New Cold War (Pantheon, 1982), p. 350 and p. 471.

6. See Joseph Nevins, “First the Butchery, Then the Flowers: Clinton and Holbrooke in East Timor,” CounterPunch, May 16 - 31, 2002 (as posted to the ETAN website).

7. See Edward S. Herman and Gerry O’Sullivan, The “Terrorism” Industry: The Experts and Institutions That Shape Our View of Terror (New York: Pantheon, 1989).

8. Even the murderous government of El Salvador received funds from the United States in 1983 under an “Anti-Terrorism Assistance Act.” See ibid., p. xiii.

9. E.g., “Sticking too firmly to the rule of law simply allows terrorists too much leeway to exploit our freedoms. Abandoning the rule of law altogether betrays our most valued institutions. To defeat evil, we may have to traffic in evils: indefinite detention of suspects, coercive interrogations, targeted assassinations, even pre-emptive war.” Michael Ignatieff, “Lesser Evils,” New York Times, May 2, 2004.

10. See his New York Times Magazine article of June 26, 2005 (“Who Are Americans to Think That Freedom Is Theirs to Spread?”).

11. Sarah Sewall, “What’s the Story Behind 30,000 Iraqi Deaths?,” Washington Post, Dec. 18, 2005.

12. The 655,000 is the most recent Lancet study estimate. More recently, Gideon Polya has given a larger estimate in “Four Years: One Million Iraqi Deaths,” CounterCurrents.org, March 22, 2007.

13. See for example Anthony Arnove’s “Four Years Later..and Counting: Billboarding the Iraqi Disaster,” TomDispatch.com, March 18, 2007.

14. A Problem from Hell, pp. 514-5.

15. Ibid., p. 472.

16. Cited in Laughland, Travesty, p. 22.

17. A Problem from Hell, pp. 146-7.

18. “The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook [to deal with the Indonesian invasion of East Timor]. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success.” Quoted in Noam Chomsky, Towards A New Cold War, (New York: Pantheon, 1982, p. 339).

19. P. Johnson and D. Martin, eds., Destructive Engagement: South Africa at War (Harare: Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1986).

20. Sami Ramadami, “In Iraq, public anger is at last translating into unity,” The Guardian, March 20, 2007.