[statecom-discuss] Re: Fw: Blum / The Anti-Empire Report / Oct 13

[Mike Heichman]

ZNet Commentary

> The Anti-Empire Report October 13, 2007
> By Bill Blum
>
> If not now, when? If not here, where? If not you, who? I used to give 
> thought to what historical time and place I would like to have lived 
> in. Europe in the 1930s was usually my first choice. As the war clouds 
> darkened, I'd be surrounded by intrigue, spies omnipresent, matters of 
> life and death pressing down, the opportunity to be courageous and 
> principled. I pictured myself helping desperate people escape to 
> America. It was real Hollywood stuff; think "Casablanca". And when the 
> Spanish Republic fell to Franco and his fascist forces, aided by the 
> German and Italian fascists (while the United States and Britain stood 
> aside, when not actually aiding the fascists), everything in my 
> imaginary scenario would have heightened -- the fate of Europe hung in 
> the balance. Then the Nazis marched into Austria, then Czechoslovakia, 
> then Poland ... one could have devoted one's life to working against 
> all this, trying to hold back the fascist tide; what could be more 
> thrilling, more noble?
>
> Miracle of miracles, miracle of time machines, I'm actually living in 
> this imagined period, watching as the Bush fascists march into 
> Afghanistan, bombing it into a "failed state"; then Iraq: death, 
> destruction, and utterly ruined lives for 24 million human beings; 
> threatening more of the same endless night of hell for the people of 
> Iran; overthrowing Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti; bombing helpless 
> refugees in Somalia; relentless attempts to destabilize and punish 
> Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Gaza, and other non-believers in 
> the empire's god-given mission. Sadly, my most common reaction to this 
> real-life scenario, daily in fact, is less heroic and more feeling 
> scared or depressed; not for myself personally but for our one and 
> only world. The news every day, which I consume in large portions, 
> slashes away at my joie de vivre; it's not just the horror stories of 
> American military power run amok abroad and the injustices of the 
> ever-expanding police state at home, but all the lies and stupidity 
> which drive me up the wall. I'm constantly changing stations, turning 
> the TV or radio off, turning the newspaper page, to escape the words 
> of the King of Lies and the King of Stupidity -- those two twisted 
> creatures who happen to occupy the same humanoid body -- and a hundred 
> minions.
>
> Nonetheless, I must tell you, comrades, that at the same time, our 
> contemporary period also brings out in me a measure of what I imagined 
> for my 1930s life. Our present world is in just as great peril, even 
> more so when one considers the impending environmental catastrophe 
> (which the King of Capitalism refuses to confront lest it harm the 
> profits of those who lavish him with royal bribes). The Bush fascist 
> tide must be stopped.
>
> Usually when I'm asked "But what can we do?", my reply is something 
> along the lines of: Inasmuch as I can not see violent revolution 
> succeeding in the United States (something deep inside tells me that 
> we couldn't quite match the government's firepower, not to mention 
> their viciousness), I can offer no solution to stopping the imperial 
> beast other than: Educate yourself and as many others as you can, 
> increasing the number of those in the opposition until it reaches a 
> critical mass, at which point ... I can't predict the form the 
> explosion will take.
>
> I'm afraid that this advice, whatever historical correctness it may 
> embody, is not terribly inspiring. However, I've assembled four wise 
> men to add their thoughts, hopefully raising the inspiration level. 
> Let's call them the "patron saints of lost causes".
>
> I.F. Stone: "The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you are 
> going to lose because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and 
> lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for 
> somebody to win an important, major fight 100 years hence, a lot of 
> other people have got to be willing -- for the sheer fun and joy of it 
> -- to go right ahead and fight, knowing you're going to lose. You 
> mustn't feel like a martyr. You've got to enjoy it."
>
> Howard Zinn: "People think there must be some magical tactic, beyond 
> the traditional ones -- protests, demonstrations, vigils, civil 
> disobedience --  but there is no magical panacea, only persistence."
>
> Noam Chomsky: "There are no magic answers, no miraculous methods to 
> overcome the problems we face, just the familiar ones: honest search 
> for understanding, education, organization, action that raises the 
> cost of state violence for its perpetrators or that lays the basis for 
> institutional change -- and the kind of commitment that will persist 
> despite the temptations of disillusionment, despite many failures and 
> only limited successes, inspired by the hope of a brighter future."
>
> Sam Smith: "Those who think history has left us helpless should recall 
> the abolitionist of 1830, the feminist of 1870, the labor organizer of 
> 1890, and the gay or lesbian writer of 1910. They, like us, did not 
> get to choose their time in history but they, like us, did get to 
> choose what they did with it. Knowing what we know now about how these 
> things turned out, but also knowing how long it took, would we have 
> been abolitionists in 1830, or feminists in 1870, and so on?"
>
> Anti-Semitism.   Don't settle for imitations. "The cleanliness of this 
> people, moral and otherwise, I must say, is a point in itself. By 
> their very exterior you could tell that these were no lovers of water, 
> and, to your distress, you often knew it with your eyes closed. ... 
> Added to this, there was their unclean dress and their generally 
> unheroic appearance. ... Was there any form of filth or profligacy, 
> particularly in cultural life, without at least one Jew involved in 
> it? ... nine tenths of all literary filth, artistic trash, and 
> theatrical idiocy can be set to the account of a people ... a people 
> under whose parasitism the whole of honest humanity is suffering, 
> today more than ever: the Jews."
>
> Now who can be the author of such abominable anti-semitism? a)Hasan 
> Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon;  b)John Mearsheimer and 
> Stephen Walt, authors of "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy"; 
> c)Osama bin Laden; d)Jimmy Carter; e)Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of 
> Iran; f)Norman Finkelstein, author of "The Holocaust Industry".
>
> Each one has been condemned as anti-Semitic. Are you having a problem 
> deciding?  Oh, excuse me, I forgot one -- g)Adolf Hitler.[1]   Does 
> that make it easier? I'll bet some of you were thinking it must have 
> been Ahmadinejad.
>
> The Webster's Dictionary defines "anti-Semite" as "One who 
> discriminates against or is hostile to or prejudiced against Jews." 
> Notice that  the state of Israel is not mentioned.
>
> The next time a critic of Israeli policies is labeled "anti-semitic" 
> think of this definition, think of Adolf's charming way of putting it, 
> then closely examine what the accused has actually said or written.
>
> It may, however, be past the time for such a rational, intellectual 
> pursuit; ultra-heated polarization reigns supreme with anything 
> concerning the Middle East, particularly Israel.
>
> In March, at a conference of the American Israel Public Affairs 
> Committee (AIPAC) in Washington, one of the speakers, an American 
> "Christian Zionist", asserted: "It is 1938, Iran is Germany and 
> Ahmadinejad is the new Hitler." The audience responded with a standing 
> ovation, one of seven for his talk.[2]
>
> Then, in May, former Israeli Prime-Minister and current Likud leader 
> Benjamin Netanyahu declared that "It's 1938 and Iran is Germany. And 
> Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs. ... [While 
> Ahmadinejad] denies the Holocaust he is preparing another Holocaust 
> for the Jewish state."[3]
>
> Not to be outdone in semi-hysterical propaganda, Israel's president, 
> Shimon Peres, has compared an Iranian nuclear bomb to a "flying 
> concentration camp".[4]
>
> So why hasn't Iran at least started its holocaust by killing or 
> throwing into concentration camps its own Jews, an estimated 30,000 in 
> number? These are Iranian Jews who have representation in Parliament 
> and who have been free for many years to emigrate to Israel but have 
> chosen not to do so.
>
> For your further apocalyptic enjoyment here are a couple more of 
> Zionism's finest envoys speaking about Iran. Former Speaker of the 
> House in the US Congress, Newt Gingrich: "Three nuclear weapons is a 
> second Holocaust. We have enemies who are quite explicit in their 
> desire to destroy us. They say it publicly, on television, on Web 
> sites. [They are] fully as determined as Nazi Germany, more determined 
> than the Soviet Union, and these enemies will kill us the first chance 
> they get."[5]
>
> And Norman Podhoretz, leading neo-conservative editor of Commentary 
> magazine, in an article entitled "The Case for Bombing Iran": "Like 
> Hitler, [Ahmadinejad] is a revolutionary whose objective is to 
> overturn the going international system and to replace it in the 
> fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the 
> religio-political culture of Islamofascism. ... The plain and brutal 
> truth is that if Iran is to be prevented from developing a nuclear 
> arsenal, there is no alternative to the actual use of military force 
> -- any more than there was an alternative to force if Hitler was to be 
> stopped in 1938."[6]
>
> Though so often condemned, Hitler actually arrived at a number of very 
> perceptive insights into how the world worked. One of them was this:  
> "The great masses of the people in the very bottom of their hearts 
> tend to be corrupted rather than consciously and purposely evil ... 
> therefore, in view of the primitive simplicity of their minds, they 
> more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one, since 
> they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies 
> that were too big."[7]
>
> Ahmadinejad arrived in New York September 24 to address the United 
> Nations. At Columbia University he was introduced by the school's 
> president as a man who appeared to lack "intellectual courage", had a 
> "fanatical mindset", and may be "astonishingly undereducated".[8] How 
> many people in the audience, I wonder, looked around to see where 
> George W. was sitting.
>
> "If I were the president of a university, I would not have invited 
> him. He's a holocaust denier," said Hillary Clinton, once again 
> fearlessly challenging the Bush administration's propaganda.[9]
>
> The above is but a small sample of the hatred, anger, and stupidity 
> spewed forth against Ahmadinejad for several years now. A number of 
> people on the American left, who should know better, have joined this 
> chorus. I therefore would like to repeat, and update, part of 
> something I wrote in this report last December, which was entitled 
> "Designer Monsters".
>
> Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a man seemingly custom-made for the White House 
> in its endless quest for enemies with whom to scare Congress, the 
> American people, and the world, in order to justify the unseemly 
> behavior of the empire. The Iranian president, we are told, has 
> declared that he wants to "wipe Israel off the map". He has said that 
> "the Holocaust is a myth". He held a conference in Iran for "Holocaust 
> deniers". And his government passed a new law requiring Jews to wear a 
> yellow insignia, à la the Nazis. On top of all that, he's aiming to 
> build nuclear bombs, one of which would surely be aimed at Israel. 
> What right-thinking person would not be scared by such a man?
>
> However, like with all such designer monsters made bigger than life 
> during the Cold War and since by Washington, the truth about 
> Ahmadinejad is a bit more complicated. According to people who know 
> Farsi, the Iranian leader has never said anything about "wiping Israel 
> off the map". In his October 29, 2005 speech, when he reportedly first 
> made the remark, the word "map" does not even appear. According to the 
> translation of Juan Cole, American professor of Modern Middle East and 
> South Asian History, Ahmadinejad said that "the regime occupying 
> Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time." His remark, said Cole, 
> "does not imply military action or killing anyone at all"[10], which 
> of course is what would make the remark sound threatening.
>
> At the December 2006 conference in Teheran ("Review of the Holocaust: 
> Global Vision"), the Iranian president said: "The Zionist regime will 
> be wiped out soon, the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity 
> will achieve freedom."[11] Obviously, the man is not calling for any 
> kind of violent attack upon Israel, for the dissolution of the Soviet 
> Union took place peacefully.
>
> Moreover, in June 2006, subsequent to Ahmadinejad's controversial 
> speech, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, stated: "We 
> have no problem with the world. We are not a threat whatsoever to the 
> world, and the world knows it. We will never start a war. We have no 
> intention of going to war with any state."[12]
>
> As for the Holocaust myth, I have yet to read or hear words from 
> Ahmadinejad saying simply, clearly, unambiguously, and unequivocally 
> that he thinks that what we know as the Holocaust never happened. He 
> has instead commented about the peculiarity and injustice of a 
> Holocaust which took place in Europe resulting in a state for the Jews 
> in the Middle East instead of in Europe. Why are the Palestinians 
> paying a price for a German crime? he asks. He argues that Israel and 
> the United States have exploited the memory of the Holocaust for their 
> own purposes. And he wonders about the accuracy of the number of Jews 
> -- six million -- allegedly killed in the Holocaust, as have many 
> other people of all political stripes, including Holocaust survivors 
> like Italian author Primo Levi. (The much publicized World War One 
> atrocities which turned out to be false made the public very skeptical 
> of the Holocaust claims for a long time after World War Two.) 
> Ahmadinejad further asks why European researchers have been imprisoned 
> for questioning certain details about the Holocaust.       Which of 
> this deserves to be labeled "Holocaust denial"?
>
> The conference gave a platform to various points of view, including 
> six members of Jews United Against Zionism, at least two of whom were 
> rabbis. One was Ahron Cohen, from London, who declared: "There is no 
> doubt whatsoever, that during World War 2 there developed a terrible 
> and catastrophic policy and action of genocide perpetrated by Nazi 
> Germany against the Jewish People." He also said that "the Zionists 
> make a great issue of the Holocaust in order to further their 
> illegitimate philosophy and aims," indicating as well that the figure 
> of six million Jewish victims is debatable. The other rabbi was Moshe 
> David Weiss, who told the delegates: "We don't want to deny the 
> killing of Jews in World War II, but Zionists have given much higher 
> figures for how many people were killed. They have used the Holocaust 
> as a device to justify their oppression." His group rejects the 
> creation of Israel on the grounds that it violates Jewish religious 
> law in that a Jewish state can't exist until the return of the Messiah 
> .[13]
>
> Another speaker was Shiraz Dossa, professor of political science at 
> St. Francis Xavier University in Canada. In an interview after the 
> conference, he described himself as an anti-imperialist and an admirer 
> of Noam Chomsky, and said that he "was invited because of my expertise 
> as a scholar in the German-Jewish area, as well as my studies in the 
> Holocaust. ... I have nothing to do with Holocaust denial, not at 
> all." His talk, he said, was "about the war on terrorism, and how the 
> Holocaust plays into it. ... There was no pressure at all to say 
> anything, and people there had different views."[14]
>
> Clearly, the conference -- which the White House called "an affront to 
> the entire civilized world"[15] -- was not set up to be a forum for 
> people to deny that the Holocaust literally never took place at all.
>
> As to the yellow star story of May 2006 -- that was a complete 
> fabrication by a prominent Iranian-American neo-conservative author, 
> Amir Taheri.
>
> Ahmadinejad, however, is partly to blame for his predicament. When 
> asked directly about the Holocaust and other controversial matters he 
> usually declines to give explicit answers of "yes" or "no". I 
> interpret this as his prideful refusal to accede to the wishes of what 
> he regards as a hostile Western interviewer asking hostile questions. 
> The Iranian president is also in the habit of prefacing certain 
> remarks with "Even if the Holocaust happened ... ", a rhetorical 
> device we all use in argument and discussion, but one which can not 
> help but reinforce the doubts people have about his views. However, 
> when Ahmadinejad himself asks, as he often has, "Why should the 
> Palestinians have to pay for something that happened in Europe?" he 
> does not get a clear answer.
>
> In any event, in the question and answer session following his talk at 
> Columbia, the Iranian president said: "I'm not saying that it [the 
> Holocaust] didn't happen at all. This is not the judgment that I'm 
> passing here."
>
> That should put the matter to rest. But of course it won't.  Two days 
> later, September 26, a bill (H. R. 3675) was introduced in Congress 
> "To prohibit Federal grants to or contracts with Columbia University", 
> to punish the school for inviting Ahmadinejad to speak. The bill's 
> first "finding" states that "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has 
> called for the destruction of the State of Israel, a critical ally of 
> the United States."
>
> That same day, comedian Jay Leno had great fun ridiculing Ahmadinejad 
> for denying that the Holocaust ever happened "despite all the 
> eye-witness accounts".
>
> How long before the first linking of Iran with 9-11? Or has that 
> already happened? How long before democracy and freedom bombs begin to 
> fall upon the heads of the Iranian people? All the charges of 
> anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, along with other disinformation, 
> are of course designed to culminate in this new crime against humanity.
>
> I wonder, in discussing these matters, if I'm running the risk of once 
> again being called "anti-Semitic" by some Internet readers. No one is 
> safe from such charges these days. It should be noted that Hugo 
> Chavez, president of Venezuela, was accused  last year of anti-semitic 
> behavior by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency of New York and the Simon 
> Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, important members of the Israel 
> lobby. The accusation was based on a highly egregious out-of-context 
> reading of some remarks by Chavez.[16] One doesn't have to be 
> particularly conspiracy minded to think that this was done in 
> collusion with Bush administration officials. As the Reagan 
> administration in 1983 flung charges of anti-Semitism against the 
> Sandinista government of Nicaragua, led by Daniel Ortega, who heads it 
> again today.[17] Stay tuned. Daniel, watch out.
>
> One final thought. On the Democratic Party's failure to stand up to 
> the Bush fascist tide. Here, from the first-person account of a German 
> living under Hitler in the 1930s, his observation about the leading 
> German political party, the Social Democrats, the Democratic Party of 
> its time: The Social Democrats, he wrote, "had fought the election 
> campaign of 1933 in a dreadfully humiliating way, chasing after the 
> Nazi slogans and emphasizing that they were 'also nationalist'. ... In 
> May, a month before they were finally dissolved, the Social Democratic 
> faction in the Reichstag had unanimously expressed their confidence in 
> Hitler and joined in the singing of the 'Horst Wessel Song,' the Nazi 
> anthem. (The official parliamentary report noted: 'Unending applause 
> and cheers, in the house and the galleries. The Reichschancellor 
> [Hitler] turns to the Social Democratic faction and applauds.')"[18]
>
> Burma It's not that I can't give United States foreign policy any 
> credit when credit is due (please send me examples of the good deeds 
> I've overlooked), but the raison d'être of this report is to try to 
> help readers understand how US foreign policy works, waking people up 
> and making them smell the garbage. American officials are now saying 
> all the right things in support of the protesting Burmese monks. They 
> condemn the Burmese leaders. They have announced new sanctions against 
> the military regime and have called upon the Security Council to 
> consider further steps. "Americans are outraged by the situation," 
> said Bush at the UN last week. But we must remember that all this 
> costs the United States nothing. There's no oil involved. Israel has 
> not yet accused the monks of anti-semitism. There's no issue of 
> terrorism involved, though the government has tried to raise the issue 
> of "terrorism" to win Washington's support. The monks have not made 
> any socialist or anti-imperialist demands. There are no American bases 
> whose removal they've called for. No Burmese troops have been helping 
> the US in Iraq or Afghanistan. Neither Halliburton nor Blackwater has 
> a presence in Burma. In short, nothing that would oblige Washington to 
> compromise, once again, on its alleged principles.
>
> NOTES [1] Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" (Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 
> 1971, original version 1925), Vol. 1, chapter 2, pp 57-8; chapter 4, 
> p.150
>
> [2] The Forward (Jewish newspaper in New York), March 16, 2007 
> http://www.forward.com/articles/pastor-hailed-bibi-dissed-pollard-rejected-whil/ 
>
>
> [3] Haaretz.com (Israeli newspaper), 
> http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/787766.html
>
> [4] Ibid.
>
> [5] The Jerusalem Post, January 23, 2007
>
> [6] Commentary Magazine (New York), June 2007
>
> [7] "Mein Kampf", op. cit., Vol. 1, chapter 10, p.231
>
> [8] Washington Post, September 25, 2007, p.1
>
> [9] Washington Post, September 25, 2007, p.6
>
> [10] Informed Comment, Cole's blog, May 3, 2006 
> www.juancole.com/2006/05/hitchens-hacker-and-hitchens.html For a 
> word-by-word breakdown of Ahmadinejad's remark, in Farsi and English, 
> see: Global Research, January 20, 2007, 
> http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=NOR20070120&articleId=4527 
>
>
> [11] Associated Press, December 12, 2006
>
> [12] Letter to Washington Post from M.A. Mohammadi, Press Officer, 
> Iranian Mission to the United Nations, June 12, 2006
>
> [13] nkusa.org/activities/Speeches/2006Iran-ACohen.cfm; 
> Telegraph.co.uk, article by Alex Spillius, December 13, 2006; 
> Associated Press, December 12, 2006
>
> [14] Globe and Mail (Toronto), December 13, 2006
>
> [15] Associated Press, December 12, 2006
>
> [16] Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, www.fair.org/index.php?page=2805
>
> [17] Holly Sklar, "Washington's War On Nicaragua" (1988), p.243
>
> [18] Sebastian Haffner, "Defying Hitler" (English edition, New York, 
> 2000), pp.130-1
>
> William Blum is the author of:  Killing Hope: US Military and CIA 
> Interventions Since World War 2 Rogue State: A Guide to the World's 
> Only Superpower West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir Freeing the 
> World to Death: Essays on the American Empire. Portions of the books 
> can be read, and signed copies purchased, at
>
>
>