[R-G] The Anti-Empire Report - William Blum

[Richard Menec]

http://members.aol.com/bblum6/aer50.htm

The Anti-Empire Report

Read this or George W. Bush will be president the rest of your life

October 1, 2007

by William Blum www.killinghope.org

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 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 and anger 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 <www.killinghope.org > Previous Anti-Empire
Reports can be read at this website at "essays". To add yourself to this
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