Stormfront website mixes white supremacism minus the "N word" in keeping with David Duke's strategy of mainstreaming racism. Actually Duke and Stormfront are late in the game. Mainstream "Code Word Racism" was pioneered by people like New York's former Mayor Edward I Koch, Richard Nixon, and the New York Daily News.
Still, such relatively small time hustlers as David Duke (who did fifteen months for fraud after pleading guilty) try to catch up with the masters such as Mort Zuckerman and Ruppert Murdoch.
Electro-hate
By Tom Kim, Intelligence Report Posted on August 18, 2005, http://www.alternet.org/story/24214/
On most days, the man once labeled a "near genius" in a Time magazine article spends the bulk of his time in an office of the Mandeville, La., home of infamous white supremacist David Duke.
There, Jamie Kelso whips across Duke's hardwood floors on a wheeled office chair as he attends to his work: monitoring the burgeoning community of the racist Stormfront Web site on one of six different computers.
To the thousands of white supremacists who regularly visit Stormfront and its forum, Kelso is best known by his e-moniker, "Charles A Lindbergh." He signs off all his posts with a quote from Lindbergh, a well-known racist and anti-Semite: "We can have peace and security only as long as we band together to preserve that most priceless possession, our inheritance of European blood."
"I admire the aviator so much," Kelso says.
The aviator, were he still alive, might well admire Kelso. As Stormfront celebrates its 10th birthday -- the first major hate site on the Internet, it was created by former Alabama Klan leader Don Black in 1995 -- Kelso has much to be proud of. In the three years he's been a senior moderator of the site, it has grown from fewer than 10,000 registered users to, as of mid-June, an astounding 52,566. And while many thousands of that ever-growing total probably haven't visited in years, independent Web monitors recently ranked Stormfront the 338th largest electronic forum on the Internet, putting it easily into the top 1 percent of all sites on the World Wide Web.
Black and Kelso have created something more than just another hate site that draws people for a few months, then fades for lack of interest. Using everything from good manners to "white scholarships" to such catchy gimmicks as highlighting its members' birthdays, these two men have built something that very few people on the entire Internet have -- a genuine and very large cyber-community. That they did it at a time when major neo-Nazi groups are on the decline is merely icing.
"Without a doubt," Bob DeMarais, a former staff member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance, wrote recently, "Stormfront is the most powerful active influence in the White Nationalist movement."
Want to find the latest headlines on black-on-white crime? Go to Stormfront. New developments in the National Alliance's leadership woes? Go to Stormfront. Details of yet another nefarious Jewish conspiracy? Go to Stormfront.
Stormfront's recent growth spurt is only the beginning, Kelso says. He and Black share a larger goal, one that their friend Duke also tried with a fair measure of success -- establishing real legitimacy in the realm of public opinion.
Fade to Black
It began with Don Black.
Going back to high school, Black had always been one of the more enthusiastic proponents of white power. One of his first forays into the organized movement was in the 1970s, when he volunteered for the late white supremacist J.B. Stoner's unsuccessful run for governor of Georgia.
That was until Stoner's campaign manager, Jerry Ray, the brother of Martin Luther King Jr. assassin James Earl Ray, shot him in the chest. The shooting apparently stemmed from accusations that Black had broken into Stoner's office to steal a mailing list for the National Socialist White People's Party.
After recovering, Black went on to join the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the group headed by Duke in the 1970s. Working on Duke's unsuccessful campaign for Louisiana state senate, Black won Duke's trust, moving up to become his mentor's right-hand man. When Duke left the group amid allegations that he'd tried to sell its membership list to another Klan group for $35,000, Black took over.
But Black quickly got into trouble himself. In 1981, he and nine other white supremacists were arrested as they prepared to board a yacht with which they intended to invade the tiny Caribbean island of Dominica, oust its black-run government, and transform it into a "white state."
Black's resulting three-year prison sentence was time well spent. He took classes in computer programming that would provide the basis for his future.
Not long after his release, Black launched an abysmally unsuccessful campaign for a U.S. Senate seat from Alabama. He wound up marrying Duke's ex-wife, Chloe, and moving to West Palm Beach, Fla. Once there, he began dabbling with his computer, eventually setting up a dial-up bulletin board service for the radical right. By March 1995, that service evolved into Stormfront, the Net's best-known hate site.
Black saw clearly that with this new technology, white supremacists might finally bypass the mainstream media and political apparatus, getting their message out to people who otherwise would never hear it -- people who now could listen in the privacy of their own homes without fear of embarrassment or reproach. "The potential of the Net for organizations and movements such as ours is enormous," Black told the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1996. "We're reaching tens of thousands of people who never before had access to our point of view."
Being the first of its kind helped Stormfront win enormous publicity. Black and his site were written up in newspapers around the country and the world, and he frequently appeared on major network news shows like ABC's Nightline, where, clad in suit and tie, he talked politely about allowing people access to information not filtered by the "media monopoly." Though he undoubtedly turned off many viewers, each major TV appearance led to a spike in visitors to Stormfront.
This Just In
Like a morning roll call, the posts pour in each day. Below the Stormfront motto, "White Pride World Wide," links to news stories with a racial angle light up the page, complete with headlines home-crafted by the members.
"Mestizo Rapes White Woman in Elevator," shouts one.
"Negro Man Stabs Elderly Woman, Shoots Detective, Negroes Screaming 'Police Brutality,'" another breathlessly reports.
And the list goes on.
But one thing you won't normally find on Stormfront are racial slurs. In fact, new members are explicitly warned not to use such language, and also not to post violent threats or anything describing illegal activity. Black clearly has modeled his site on some of the tactics used by Duke, who famously urged his Klan followers to "get out of the cow pasture and into hotel meeting rooms." As Black once told a reporter, "We don't use the 'nigger, nigger' type of approaches."
When New Jersey neo-Nazi Hal Turner began posting incendiary comments this March about a federal judge whose family was murdered, he was rapidly excommunicated. "[T]hey are so afraid of rocking the ZOG [Zionist Occupation Government] boat that they scurry around behind the scenes censoring posts of folks who are strong enough to speak the plain truth," Turner fumed later.
It's not that Stormfront is about moderation -- hardly. The talk is all about the evils of African Americans, homosexuals, non-white immigrants, and, above all, Jews, who are blamed for most of what's wrong in the world.
As pointed out by Cass Sunstein, the University of Chicago law professor who wrote the 2001 book republic.com, "Extremists and hate-filled sites tend to attract likeminded people who, if isolated, could come to their senses." Likeminded people talking to one another, Sunstein says, "tend to become more extremist."
But it's all done with a tone of simmering civility. "One of the things that Don Black does very well is he doesn't fit the stereotype of an angry man," Kelso proudly told the Intelligence Report in a lengthy interview recently. "Don is the most under-recognized giant in the whole white nationalist movement."
Kelso, who was featured in a 1960s Time article about teenagers in the Los Angeles suburbs, personifies the approach. Animated and cordial, he happily offers to set up a Stormfront account for an Intelligence Report writer. He exudes a kind of grandfatherly charm -- the same charm that he exhibits in some of his postings, and in his tireless welcoming of new members to the Stormfront community.
It is, Kelso says, "a positive spiritual approach."
Building Community
Stormfront -- along with the many lesser radical forums on the Internet -- has always done better than the much more numerous hate Web pages.
Whereas typical hate sites function as one-way transfers of information -- rather like a brochure posted in a grocery store that can be read but cannot be responded to -- Stormfront has always been organized as a message board. Members can post opinions, listen to others respond, then post more feedback for all to read. The potential for dialogues to develop was built in -- and, therefore, so was the potential to develop a genuine white supremacist cyber-community.
"The great power of the Internet is it allows people who don't know each other... to connect with people with shared interests," says Howard Rheingold, an Internet theorist and author. "The shared interests might be that 'I have a kid with leukemia.' Or, 'I'm a Nazi.' It gives marginalized people more power."
Black and Kelso, both men who could put up a relatively clean-cut and civilized front, saw eye to eye on the possibilities.
So when Jamie Kelso joined Stormfront about three years ago, he successfully began pushing for leading movement writers -- men like Sam Dickson, a leader of the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens, and Willis Carto, publisher of the Holocaust-denying journal The Barnes Review -- to start posting.
That was just part of an effort to make the site more inclusive.
Although the forum has recently censored some posts critical of the National Alliance -- a major neo-Nazi group undergoing an internal civil war -- it generally has tried to maintain a relatively non-sectarian stance, making people from different sectors of the radical right feel welcome to join in. As Black once told a reporter for Newhouse News Service, "Anyone can work to promote our ideas without being a member of any organization. I used to be annoyed by people who didn't join my organization, but I see the advantage now."
Black and Kelso take care to avoid appearing dictatorial. One result is that the forum, within the bounds of the radical right, feels very democratic -- a gathering of people with similar interests in what increasingly looks like a community.
Every member gets to choose a graphic to accompany their postings.
Little smiley faces and other signs abound. It's not unusual to spot two members using an animation where the faces toast with mugs of beer.
There is a list of birthdays of members on the main page. Birthday greetings are frequently exchanged, along with notes of consolation or encouragement.
There are essay contests and $2,000 scholarships for white kids.
And, to encourage the shy, Kelso frequently starts innocuous threads to get people to start joining in the conversation. "Where is Your Home?" Kelso asks at the head of one. Or, atop another, "What inspired your screen name?"
The results have been fairly spectacular. In January 2002, Stormfront had a mere 5,000 members. A year later, membership reached 11,000; and a year after that, in early 2004, it had 23,000. By January 2005, membership hit about 42,000, and it finally topped 52,000 this June. In the last year, a Kelso analysis showed, the site has been gaining an average of almost 500 new members every week.
That doesn't include the large numbers of those who simply read Stormfront postings without joining up (becoming a member allows one to post messages and also to view personal information posted by other members). All together, total traffic to the site gave it an Alexa Web monitor ranking this June of the 8,682nd most visited site on the Internet -- a rank well above that of most civil rights sites.
Bob DeMarais, for one, sees Kelso as integral to Stormfront's success. "Jamie Kelso did much of the marketing and promotion responsible for Stormfront's recent growth spurt," DeMarais wrote recently. "Kelso has a knack for making new people feel welcome and getting them to start posting."
But Does It Matter?
With Stormfront growing every day, a larger question has developed: What does it mean for the movement?
The site is very unlike a traditional hate group. There is no formal hierarchy, even though Black and Kelso run the site, and no charismatic leader issues orders. That's one reason that Devin Burghart, who analyzes hate groups for the Center for New Community in Chicago, doesn't think that Stormfront has the potential to be much more than a sounding board for angry racists. He also points out that for every white supremacist kept busy posting messages on his or her computer screen, there is one less person available to be out in the neighborhoods organizing.
Other experts see some organizing possibilities.
"While you can certainly build a community online, it [only] thrives with face-to-face interaction," said John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. "Starting with the Internet, however, might not be a terrible idea."
That's what Joe Trippi did. As the first manager of the presidential campaign of Howard Dean, he raised immense sums and also got people out of their homes and into the campaign -- all via the Internet. "What you've got to do, is you have to have two-way communication," Trippi explained in an interview. "It's the bond, to be able to talk to each other about you, that is important."
David Weinberger, who served as senior Internet advisor under Trippi and is now a fellow at the Berkman Center, agreed. "The left and the right can do the same thing," he told the Intelligence Report. "The Net can do the same thing for racists as it did for the Dean campaign. Treating your readers not as readers but as participants is a really good way of creating community and getting supporters."
There are already some signs that Stormfront's cyber-community may be developing, at least in some places, into physical community. Earlier this year, a group of members got together in San Diego for the first time.
"We just talked about whatever came to mind for three and a half hours or so," one wrote afterward. "We all want to start doing this on a regular basis in order to foster camaraderie and group cohesion.... We wish to have larger and larger numbers of people coming out with each successive get-together."
The event, another wrote back, "is only the beginning for bigger and better things to come. Eventually, there will be political organization and activity."
All this is music to Jamie Kelso.
"You always want to paint your opponents in the worst possible light," Kelso said of antiracist activists and other Stormfront detractors. "That becomes hard to do when an organization reaches large numbers. It's not plausible to say hundreds of thousands of people are nuts. We're striving to be seen as our own kind of mainstream, and that we're not kooky."
The recent successes of Stormfront have been, as Trippi would say, "viral." More than 70 people a day are joining the forum, and although some are mere tourists or even antiracist researchers, huge numbers are potential true believers. If Black and Kelso continue to succeed -- if Stormfront members increasingly come out from behind their computer monitors and get into the streets -- it could turn out that the forum becomes one of the real pillars of American radicalism. Kelso, always the optimist, predicts reaching a membership of 500,000 by 2010.
That is probably unrealistic. But the possibility has veterans of the Internet and the world of real competitive politics worried. "I'd hate to think," Trippi says, "what Hitler could've done with the Internet."
For more coverage on racist activity in America and the organziations that carry it out, visit the Southern Poverty Law Center.
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/24214/
What Israel Has Done to Palestinian Children With U.S. Taxpayers' Dollars
Thursday, November 30, 2006
PSEUDO-SCIENCE & RACE, A collection of articles about the book The Bell Curve, the book, and similar pseudo-science trash.
Perhaps in their search for allies some ostensibly anti zionist Jews are sucking up to white supremacists. Racism, specifically Jewish and white supremacism, is poison. It also is unscientific. I'd rather be alone, a voice in the wilderness, than to suck up to these racists.
Interesting who wrote the Bell Curve to begin with, no?
PSEUDO-SCIENCE & RACE
In a speech entitled "Science, Education and Democracy," delivered at the 1913 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Atlanta and published a month later in Science magazine,* James McKeen Cattell, owner and editor of Science, declared--while arguing for educational opportunities for blacks--that "There is not a single mulatto who has done creditable scientific work." [reference]
Articles below:
1. Science and Opportunity : "Charles Henry Turner and Ernest Everett Just ... had been publishing scientific articles in major journals for several years before Cattell delivered his speech."
2. The Bell Curve Debate : "Herrnstein and Murray prefer to ignore all the advances that have been made in neurobiology, embryology, cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, evolutionary biology and genetics. No serious scientist now speaks of intelligence as a single faculty."
3. The Dishonest Claim of Genetic Racial IQ Differences : If you grow genetically similar seeds in uniform conditions, most of the slight variations that occur in them will be due to genetic differences. Since the environmental variance is nearly zero, the heritability ratio is high. If the same seeds are grown in a variable environment much of the observed variation will be due to the environmental differences and the resulting heritability ratio for the same seeds will be low. Thus it is impossible to talk about the heritability of the seeds themselves, only of the seeds grown under particular conditions.
4. Scientific Racism, A review of The Science and Politics of Racial Research
Reference:
Bell Curve, the book7
Interesting who wrote the Bell Curve to begin with, no?
PSEUDO-SCIENCE & RACE
In a speech entitled "Science, Education and Democracy," delivered at the 1913 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Atlanta and published a month later in Science magazine,* James McKeen Cattell, owner and editor of Science, declared--while arguing for educational opportunities for blacks--that "There is not a single mulatto who has done creditable scientific work." [reference]
Articles below:
1. Science and Opportunity : "Charles Henry Turner and Ernest Everett Just ... had been publishing scientific articles in major journals for several years before Cattell delivered his speech."
2. The Bell Curve Debate : "Herrnstein and Murray prefer to ignore all the advances that have been made in neurobiology, embryology, cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, evolutionary biology and genetics. No serious scientist now speaks of intelligence as a single faculty."
3. The Dishonest Claim of Genetic Racial IQ Differences : If you grow genetically similar seeds in uniform conditions, most of the slight variations that occur in them will be due to genetic differences. Since the environmental variance is nearly zero, the heritability ratio is high. If the same seeds are grown in a variable environment much of the observed variation will be due to the environmental differences and the resulting heritability ratio for the same seeds will be low. Thus it is impossible to talk about the heritability of the seeds themselves, only of the seeds grown under particular conditions.
4. Scientific Racism, A review of The Science and Politics of Racial Research
Reference:
Bell Curve, the book7
Message of H.E. Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
When a world leader sends a message directly to The American People it behooves us especially in these dangerous times to read it, and not rely upon what others might tell us about it.
Message of H.E. Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
President of the Islamic Republic of Iran
To the American People
In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
O, Almighty God, bestow upon humanity the perfect human being promised to all by You, and make us among his followers.
Noble Americans,
Were we not faced with the activities of the US administration in this part of the world and the negative ramifications of those activities on the daily lives of our peoples, coupled with the many wars and calamities caused by the US administration as well as the tragic consequences of US interference in other countries;
Were the American people not God-fearing, truth-loving, and justice-seeking , while the US administration actively conceals the truth and impedes any objective portrayal of current realities;
And if we did not share a common responsibility to promote and protect freedom and human dignity and integrity;
Then, there would have been little urgency to have a dialogue with you.
While Divine providence has placed Iran and the United States geographically far apart, we should be cognizant that human values and our common human spirit, which proclaim the dignity and exalted worth of all human beings, have brought our two great nations of Iran and the United States closer together.
Both our nations are God-fearing, truth-loving and justice-seeking, and both seek dignity, respect and perfection.
Both greatly value and readily embrace the promotion of human ideals such as compassion, empathy, respect for the rights of human beings, securing justice and equity, and defending the innocent and the weak against oppressors and bullies.
We are all inclined towards the good, and towards extending a helping hand to one another, particularly to those in need.
We all deplore injustice, the trampling of peoples' rights and the intimidation and humiliation of human beings.
We all detest darkness, deceit, lies and distortion, and seek and admire salvation, enlightenment, sincerity and honesty.
The pure human essence of the two great nations of Iran and the United States testify to the veracity of these statements.
Noble Americans,
Our nation has always extended its hand of friendship to all other nations of the world.
Hundreds of thousands of my Iranian compatriots are living amongst you in friendship and peace, and are contributing positively to your society. Our people have been in contact with you over the past many years and have maintained these contacts despite the unnecessary restrictions of US authorities.
As mentioned, we have common concerns, face similar challenges, and are pained by the sufferings and afflictions in the world.
We, like you, are aggrieved by the ever-worsening pain and misery of the Palestinian people. Persistent aggressions by the Zionists are making life more and more difficult for the rightful owners of the land of Palestine . In broad day-light, in front of cameras and before the eyes of the world, they are bombarding innocent defenseless civilians, bulldozing houses, firing machine guns at students in the streets and alleys, and subjecting their families to endless grief.
No day goes by without a new crime.
Palestinian mothers, just like Iranian and American mothers, love their children, and are painfully bereaved by the imprisonment, wounding and murder of their children. What mother wouldn't?
For 60 years, the Zionist regime has driven millions of the inhabitants of Palestine out of their homes. Many of these refugees have died in the Diaspora and in refugee camps. Their children have spent their youth in these camps and are aging while still in the hope of returning to homeland.
You know well that the US administration has persistently provided blind and blanket support to the Zionist regime, has emboldened it to continue its crimes, and has prevented the UN Security Council from condemning it.
Who can deny such broken promises and grave injustices towards humanity by the US administration?
Governments are there to serve their own people. No people wants to side with or support any oppressors. But regrettably, the US administration disregards even its own public opinion and remains in the forefront of supporting the trampling of the rights of the Palestinian people.
Let's take a look at Iraq . Since the commencement of the US military presence in Iraq , hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed, maimed or displaced. Terrorism in Iraq has grown exponentially. With the presence of the US military in Iraq , nothing has been done to rebuild the ruins, to restore the infrastructure or to alleviate poverty. The US Government used the pretext of the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq , but later it became clear that that was just a lie and a deception.
Although Saddam was overthrown and people are happy about his departure, the pain and suffering of the Iraqi people has persisted and has even been aggravated.
In Iraq , about one hundred and fifty thousand American soldiers, separated from their families and loved ones, are operating under the command of the current US administration. A substantial number of them have been killed or wounded and their presence in Iraq has tarnished the image of the American people and government.
Their mothers and relatives have, on numerous occasions, displayed their discontent with the presence of their sons and daughters in a land thousands of miles away from US shores. American soldiers often wonder why they have been sent to Iraq .
I consider it extremely unlikely that you, the American people, consent to the billions of dollars of annual expenditure from your treasury for this military misadventure.
Noble Americans,
You have heard that the US administration is kidnapping its presumed opponents from across the globe and arbitrarily holding them without trial or any international supervision in horrendous prisons that it has established in various parts of the world. God knows who these detainees actually are, and what terrible fate awaits them.
You have certainly heard the sad stories of the Guantanamo and Abu-Ghraib prisons. The US administration attempts to justify them through its proclaimed “war on terror.” But every one knows that such behavior, in fact, offends global public opinion, exacerbates resentment and thereby spreads terrorism, and tarnishes the US image and its credibility among nations.
The US administration's illegal and immoral behavior is not even confined to outside its borders. You are witnessing daily that under the pretext of “the war on terror,” civil liberties in the United States are being increasingly curtailed. Even the privacy of individuals is fast losing its meaning. Judicial due process and fundamental rights are trampled upon. Private phones are tapped, suspects are arbitrarily arrested, sometimes beaten in the streets, or even shot to death.
I have no doubt that the American people do not approve of this behavior and indeed deplore it.
The US administration does not accept accountability before any organization, institution or council. The US administration has undermined the credibility of international organizations, particularly the United Nations and its Security Council. But, I do not intend to address all the challenges and calamities in this message.
The legitimacy, power and influence of a government do not emanate from its arsenals of tanks, fighter aircrafts, missiles or nuclear weapons. Legitimacy and influence reside in sound logic, quest for justice and compassion and empathy for all humanity. The global position of the United States is in all probability weakened because the administration has continued to resort to force, to conceal the truth, and to mislead the American people about its policies and practices.
Undoubtedly, the American people are not satisfied with this behavior and they showed their discontent in the recent elections. I hope that in the wake of the mid-term elections, the administration of President Bush will have heard and will heed the message of the American people.
My questions are the following:
Is there not a better approach to governance?
Is it not possible to put wealth and power in the service of peace, stability, prosperity and the happiness of all peoples through a commitment to justice and respect for the rights of all nations, instead of aggression and war?
We all condemn terrorism, because its victims are the innocent.
But, can terrorism be contained and eradicated through war, destruction and the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocents?
If that were possible, then why has the problem not been resolved?
The sad experience of invading Iraq is before us all.
What has blind support for the Zionists by the US administration brought for the American people? It is regrettable that for the US administration, the interests of these occupiers supersedes the interests of the American people and of the other nations of the world.
What have the Zionists done for the American people that the US administration considers itself obliged to blindly support these infamous aggressors? Is it not because they have imposed themselves on a substantial portion of the banking, financial, cultural and media sectors?
I recommend that in a demonstration of respect for the American people and for humanity, the right of Palestinians to live in their own homeland should be recognized so that millions of Palestinian refugees can return to their homes and the future of all of Palestine and its form of government be determined in a referendum. This will benefit everyone.
Now that Iraq has a Constitution and an independent Assembly and Government, would it not be more beneficial to bring the US officers and soldiers home, and to spend the astronomical US military expenditures in Iraq for the welfare and prosperity of the American people? As you know very well, many victims of Katrina continue to suffer, and countless Americans continue to live in poverty and homelessness.
I'd also like to say a word to the winners of the recent elections in the US :
The United States has had many administrations; some who have left a positive legacy, and others that are neither remembered fondly by the American people nor by other nations.
Now that you control an important branch of the US Government, you will also be held to account by the people and by history.
If the US Government meets the current domestic and external challenges with an approach based on truth and Justice, it can remedy some of the past afflictions and alleviate some of the global resentment and hatred of America . But if the approach remains the same, it would not be unexpected that the American people would similarly reject the new electoral winners, although the recent elections, rather than reflecting a victory, in reality point to the failure of the current administration's policies. These issues had been extensively dealt with in my letter to President Bush earlier this year.
To sum up:
It is possible to govern based on an approach that is distinctly different from one of coercion, force and injustice.
It is possible to sincerely serve and promote common human values, and honesty and compassion.
It is possible to provide welfare and prosperity without tension, threats, imposition or war.
It is possible to lead the world towards the aspired perfection by adhering to unity, monotheism, morality and spirituality and drawing upon the teachings of the Divine Prophets.
Then, the American people, who are God-fearing and followers of Divine religions, will overcome every difficulty.
What I stated represents some of my anxieties and concerns.
I am confident that you, the American people, will play an instrumental role in the establishment of justice and spirituality throughout the world. The promises of the Almighty and His prophets will certainly be realized; Justice and Truth will prevail and all nations will live a true life in a climate replete with love, compassion and fraternity.
The US governing establishment, the authorities and the powerful should not choose irreversible paths. As all prophets have taught us, injustice and transgression will eventually bring about decline and demise. Today, the path of return to faith and spirituality is open and unimpeded.
We should all heed the Divine Word of the Holy Qur'an:
“ But those who repent, have faith and do good may receive Salvation. Your Lord, alone, creates and chooses as He will, and others have no part in His choice; Glorified is God and Exalted above any partners they ascribe to Him. ” (28:67-68)
I pray to the Almighty to bless the Iranian and American nations and indeed all nations of the world with dignity and success.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
President of the Islamic Republic of Iran
29 November 2006
Message of H.E. Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
President of the Islamic Republic of Iran
To the American People
In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
O, Almighty God, bestow upon humanity the perfect human being promised to all by You, and make us among his followers.
Noble Americans,
Were we not faced with the activities of the US administration in this part of the world and the negative ramifications of those activities on the daily lives of our peoples, coupled with the many wars and calamities caused by the US administration as well as the tragic consequences of US interference in other countries;
Were the American people not God-fearing, truth-loving, and justice-seeking , while the US administration actively conceals the truth and impedes any objective portrayal of current realities;
And if we did not share a common responsibility to promote and protect freedom and human dignity and integrity;
Then, there would have been little urgency to have a dialogue with you.
While Divine providence has placed Iran and the United States geographically far apart, we should be cognizant that human values and our common human spirit, which proclaim the dignity and exalted worth of all human beings, have brought our two great nations of Iran and the United States closer together.
Both our nations are God-fearing, truth-loving and justice-seeking, and both seek dignity, respect and perfection.
Both greatly value and readily embrace the promotion of human ideals such as compassion, empathy, respect for the rights of human beings, securing justice and equity, and defending the innocent and the weak against oppressors and bullies.
We are all inclined towards the good, and towards extending a helping hand to one another, particularly to those in need.
We all deplore injustice, the trampling of peoples' rights and the intimidation and humiliation of human beings.
We all detest darkness, deceit, lies and distortion, and seek and admire salvation, enlightenment, sincerity and honesty.
The pure human essence of the two great nations of Iran and the United States testify to the veracity of these statements.
Noble Americans,
Our nation has always extended its hand of friendship to all other nations of the world.
Hundreds of thousands of my Iranian compatriots are living amongst you in friendship and peace, and are contributing positively to your society. Our people have been in contact with you over the past many years and have maintained these contacts despite the unnecessary restrictions of US authorities.
As mentioned, we have common concerns, face similar challenges, and are pained by the sufferings and afflictions in the world.
We, like you, are aggrieved by the ever-worsening pain and misery of the Palestinian people. Persistent aggressions by the Zionists are making life more and more difficult for the rightful owners of the land of Palestine . In broad day-light, in front of cameras and before the eyes of the world, they are bombarding innocent defenseless civilians, bulldozing houses, firing machine guns at students in the streets and alleys, and subjecting their families to endless grief.
No day goes by without a new crime.
Palestinian mothers, just like Iranian and American mothers, love their children, and are painfully bereaved by the imprisonment, wounding and murder of their children. What mother wouldn't?
For 60 years, the Zionist regime has driven millions of the inhabitants of Palestine out of their homes. Many of these refugees have died in the Diaspora and in refugee camps. Their children have spent their youth in these camps and are aging while still in the hope of returning to homeland.
You know well that the US administration has persistently provided blind and blanket support to the Zionist regime, has emboldened it to continue its crimes, and has prevented the UN Security Council from condemning it.
Who can deny such broken promises and grave injustices towards humanity by the US administration?
Governments are there to serve their own people. No people wants to side with or support any oppressors. But regrettably, the US administration disregards even its own public opinion and remains in the forefront of supporting the trampling of the rights of the Palestinian people.
Let's take a look at Iraq . Since the commencement of the US military presence in Iraq , hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed, maimed or displaced. Terrorism in Iraq has grown exponentially. With the presence of the US military in Iraq , nothing has been done to rebuild the ruins, to restore the infrastructure or to alleviate poverty. The US Government used the pretext of the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq , but later it became clear that that was just a lie and a deception.
Although Saddam was overthrown and people are happy about his departure, the pain and suffering of the Iraqi people has persisted and has even been aggravated.
In Iraq , about one hundred and fifty thousand American soldiers, separated from their families and loved ones, are operating under the command of the current US administration. A substantial number of them have been killed or wounded and their presence in Iraq has tarnished the image of the American people and government.
Their mothers and relatives have, on numerous occasions, displayed their discontent with the presence of their sons and daughters in a land thousands of miles away from US shores. American soldiers often wonder why they have been sent to Iraq .
I consider it extremely unlikely that you, the American people, consent to the billions of dollars of annual expenditure from your treasury for this military misadventure.
Noble Americans,
You have heard that the US administration is kidnapping its presumed opponents from across the globe and arbitrarily holding them without trial or any international supervision in horrendous prisons that it has established in various parts of the world. God knows who these detainees actually are, and what terrible fate awaits them.
You have certainly heard the sad stories of the Guantanamo and Abu-Ghraib prisons. The US administration attempts to justify them through its proclaimed “war on terror.” But every one knows that such behavior, in fact, offends global public opinion, exacerbates resentment and thereby spreads terrorism, and tarnishes the US image and its credibility among nations.
The US administration's illegal and immoral behavior is not even confined to outside its borders. You are witnessing daily that under the pretext of “the war on terror,” civil liberties in the United States are being increasingly curtailed. Even the privacy of individuals is fast losing its meaning. Judicial due process and fundamental rights are trampled upon. Private phones are tapped, suspects are arbitrarily arrested, sometimes beaten in the streets, or even shot to death.
I have no doubt that the American people do not approve of this behavior and indeed deplore it.
The US administration does not accept accountability before any organization, institution or council. The US administration has undermined the credibility of international organizations, particularly the United Nations and its Security Council. But, I do not intend to address all the challenges and calamities in this message.
The legitimacy, power and influence of a government do not emanate from its arsenals of tanks, fighter aircrafts, missiles or nuclear weapons. Legitimacy and influence reside in sound logic, quest for justice and compassion and empathy for all humanity. The global position of the United States is in all probability weakened because the administration has continued to resort to force, to conceal the truth, and to mislead the American people about its policies and practices.
Undoubtedly, the American people are not satisfied with this behavior and they showed their discontent in the recent elections. I hope that in the wake of the mid-term elections, the administration of President Bush will have heard and will heed the message of the American people.
My questions are the following:
Is there not a better approach to governance?
Is it not possible to put wealth and power in the service of peace, stability, prosperity and the happiness of all peoples through a commitment to justice and respect for the rights of all nations, instead of aggression and war?
We all condemn terrorism, because its victims are the innocent.
But, can terrorism be contained and eradicated through war, destruction and the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocents?
If that were possible, then why has the problem not been resolved?
The sad experience of invading Iraq is before us all.
What has blind support for the Zionists by the US administration brought for the American people? It is regrettable that for the US administration, the interests of these occupiers supersedes the interests of the American people and of the other nations of the world.
What have the Zionists done for the American people that the US administration considers itself obliged to blindly support these infamous aggressors? Is it not because they have imposed themselves on a substantial portion of the banking, financial, cultural and media sectors?
I recommend that in a demonstration of respect for the American people and for humanity, the right of Palestinians to live in their own homeland should be recognized so that millions of Palestinian refugees can return to their homes and the future of all of Palestine and its form of government be determined in a referendum. This will benefit everyone.
Now that Iraq has a Constitution and an independent Assembly and Government, would it not be more beneficial to bring the US officers and soldiers home, and to spend the astronomical US military expenditures in Iraq for the welfare and prosperity of the American people? As you know very well, many victims of Katrina continue to suffer, and countless Americans continue to live in poverty and homelessness.
I'd also like to say a word to the winners of the recent elections in the US :
The United States has had many administrations; some who have left a positive legacy, and others that are neither remembered fondly by the American people nor by other nations.
Now that you control an important branch of the US Government, you will also be held to account by the people and by history.
If the US Government meets the current domestic and external challenges with an approach based on truth and Justice, it can remedy some of the past afflictions and alleviate some of the global resentment and hatred of America . But if the approach remains the same, it would not be unexpected that the American people would similarly reject the new electoral winners, although the recent elections, rather than reflecting a victory, in reality point to the failure of the current administration's policies. These issues had been extensively dealt with in my letter to President Bush earlier this year.
To sum up:
It is possible to govern based on an approach that is distinctly different from one of coercion, force and injustice.
It is possible to sincerely serve and promote common human values, and honesty and compassion.
It is possible to provide welfare and prosperity without tension, threats, imposition or war.
It is possible to lead the world towards the aspired perfection by adhering to unity, monotheism, morality and spirituality and drawing upon the teachings of the Divine Prophets.
Then, the American people, who are God-fearing and followers of Divine religions, will overcome every difficulty.
What I stated represents some of my anxieties and concerns.
I am confident that you, the American people, will play an instrumental role in the establishment of justice and spirituality throughout the world. The promises of the Almighty and His prophets will certainly be realized; Justice and Truth will prevail and all nations will live a true life in a climate replete with love, compassion and fraternity.
The US governing establishment, the authorities and the powerful should not choose irreversible paths. As all prophets have taught us, injustice and transgression will eventually bring about decline and demise. Today, the path of return to faith and spirituality is open and unimpeded.
We should all heed the Divine Word of the Holy Qur'an:
“ But those who repent, have faith and do good may receive Salvation. Your Lord, alone, creates and chooses as He will, and others have no part in His choice; Glorified is God and Exalted above any partners they ascribe to Him. ” (28:67-68)
I pray to the Almighty to bless the Iranian and American nations and indeed all nations of the world with dignity and success.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
President of the Islamic Republic of Iran
29 November 2006
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Fifty Shots
By now everyone knows that NYPD cops fired fifty shots at a group of unarmed young men in Queens, New York killing a twenty - three year old seriously injuring two other young men and injuring two police officers who were patrolling a nearby railroad station.
Mayor Bloomberg says that fifty shots are "unacceptable" but he also says he supports the Police Commissioner.
This is a matter for a real criminal trial, not a matter for the Police Commissioner to decide on and not a matter for another a "throw away prosecution" that District Attorneys mount when they are forced to bring charges against NYPD cops.
Mayor Bloomberg says that fifty shots are "unacceptable" but he also says he supports the Police Commissioner.
This is a matter for a real criminal trial, not a matter for the Police Commissioner to decide on and not a matter for another a "throw away prosecution" that District Attorneys mount when they are forced to bring charges against NYPD cops.
Friday, November 24, 2006
Taxi fare increase, how vistors should use New York taxis, more
New York's taxi fares go up at midnight November 30. The fare increase has two facets. The first and most important one is the increase in the meterd charge for time when the taxi is not moving or is in traffic moving at less than 12 miles per hour. It's been set at a rate of twelve dollars an hour - very cheap fro the use of a driver and an automobile - to twenty-four dollars an hour, still quite a bargain, and still cheaper than several big American cities.
I'm no fan of Mayor Bloomberg and I plan to continue to write some pretty scathing stuff about him as I have in the past, but as far as I know this is the first time since taxi driving became a leasing rather than a commission based job that the fare has increased and the lease rates, which are set and monitored by the city government, have not gone up, so at least for the time being the rate increase is solely for the drivers, and no doubt this reflects the will of Mayor Bloomberg.
The second aspect of the fare increase is the $45 flat rate from anywhere in Manhattan to Kennedy Airport. It's still a lot cheaper than the limo hustler who is probably your hotel doorman's brother.
Visitors to New York city should beware of these guys who roam the airport terminals offering rides, taxi service, whatever. They are crooks. The New York area airports have designated areas where passengers meet up with yellow medallion legal, regulated taxis. The drivers do not and are not permitted to go into the terminals to solicit rides. It's a shame that the Port Authority cops don't make a priority of stopping these crooks and that the airlines don't warn their passengers, so let me do it.
I hate to see you hotel guests, who bring business to New York and who are usually delightful passengers, standing there in front of your hotel wating for the doorman to "get you a cab." Cabs don't often cruise down side streets (small one way streets) empty. If you take a few steps over to the nearest avenue be it Park Avenue, Madison Avenue, Fifth Avenue, Avenue of the Americas, Broadway or whichever, you will increase your chances of bagging a cab yourself. Also allow yourself lots of time, I mean at least an hour more than you think is okay, to get to the theater by eight o'clock. You might want to check out map.com and discover that your theater is not a long walk from your hotel. You'll probably walk there faster than I could drive you there.
I gave somone a hundred dollar bill in lieu of a ten Monday night. I don't know who it was. I hope he or she didn't realize I was doing it. I sure didn't. I've got hundreds a couple of times that same way, so on Monday night I guess God made me give one back.
I'm no fan of Mayor Bloomberg and I plan to continue to write some pretty scathing stuff about him as I have in the past, but as far as I know this is the first time since taxi driving became a leasing rather than a commission based job that the fare has increased and the lease rates, which are set and monitored by the city government, have not gone up, so at least for the time being the rate increase is solely for the drivers, and no doubt this reflects the will of Mayor Bloomberg.
The second aspect of the fare increase is the $45 flat rate from anywhere in Manhattan to Kennedy Airport. It's still a lot cheaper than the limo hustler who is probably your hotel doorman's brother.
Visitors to New York city should beware of these guys who roam the airport terminals offering rides, taxi service, whatever. They are crooks. The New York area airports have designated areas where passengers meet up with yellow medallion legal, regulated taxis. The drivers do not and are not permitted to go into the terminals to solicit rides. It's a shame that the Port Authority cops don't make a priority of stopping these crooks and that the airlines don't warn their passengers, so let me do it.
I hate to see you hotel guests, who bring business to New York and who are usually delightful passengers, standing there in front of your hotel wating for the doorman to "get you a cab." Cabs don't often cruise down side streets (small one way streets) empty. If you take a few steps over to the nearest avenue be it Park Avenue, Madison Avenue, Fifth Avenue, Avenue of the Americas, Broadway or whichever, you will increase your chances of bagging a cab yourself. Also allow yourself lots of time, I mean at least an hour more than you think is okay, to get to the theater by eight o'clock. You might want to check out map.com and discover that your theater is not a long walk from your hotel. You'll probably walk there faster than I could drive you there.
I gave somone a hundred dollar bill in lieu of a ten Monday night. I don't know who it was. I hope he or she didn't realize I was doing it. I sure didn't. I've got hundreds a couple of times that same way, so on Monday night I guess God made me give one back.
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Venezuela Next? How the US overthrows governments it doesn't like.
Venezuela, like every other state, has the right to protect its existence and its country's sovereignty.
In my opinion these oposition media, especially the radio and television stations, need to be shut down. The airwaves belong to the nation, not to a bunch of sell outs, racists and traitors who work in tandem with a foriegn power to harm the country's well being by spreading lies and panic.
That's also something we here in the US and perhaps people of other countries should think about as well.
Coup d'État in Venezuela: Made in the USA
Wednesday, Nov 22, 2006
Print format
Send by email
By: Chris Carlson - Gringo in Venezuela
In 1999, when the U.S.-led bombing campaign in Serbia didn't get rid of Slobodan Milosovic, Washington changed its strategy. U.S. intelligence organized a $77 million effort to oust Milosovic through the ballot box. They sent in CIA front organizations funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Instead of guns and bombs, these U.S. forces were armed with fax machines, computers, and perhaps most importantly, sophisticated surveys done by the Washington-based polling firm Penn, Schoen & Berland.(1) Their mission: to take down Milosovic by strengthening opposition groups. Milosovic is now long gone, as the U.S. effort to mobilize the opposition and produce mass protests was successful in unseating him in the 2000 elections. This victory was a landmark for U.S. intelligence agencies. They had developed a new way to overthrow unfriendly regimes, and it was much easier than a violent overthrow, or a messy invasion. Penn, Schoen & Berland had played an important role; so important that the U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright commended them, saying "This may be one of the first instances where polling has played such an important role in setting and securing foreign policy objectives."(2) They did, indeed, secure their foreign policy objectives. Milosovic was out, and the U.S.-backed opposition took power.
Since 2000, this smooth new strategy to influence elections and topple regimes has been implemented in many other countries. Dubbed as the "post-modern coup" by Jonathan Mowat, the same brilliant techniques were used in Belarus in 2001, in Georgia in 2003, and in the Ukraine in 2004, to name a few. Although it ultimately failed in Belarus, in Georgia the U.S. effort produced the "Rose Revolution" which overthrew President Eduard Shevardnadze. In the Ukraine it was the "Orange Revolution" that installed Victor Yushchenko in 2004.(3) Each time, groups financed by the NED, and USAID worked inside the country to build popular support for the opposition candidate. Each time they constructed an appealing campaign image using the modern marketing tactics that they have perfected along the way. And each time, they used Penn, Schoen & Berland election "polls" to shape the public's perception. In his article, "Coup D'etat in Disguise," Jonathan Mowat described how these "polls" work:
"Penn, Schoen and Berland (PSB) has played a pioneering role in the use of polling operations, especially "exit polls," in facilitating coups. Its primary mission is to shape the perception that the group installed into power in a targeted country has broad popular support. ""...the deployment of polling agencies' "exit polls" broadcast on international television...give the false impression of massive vote-fraud by the ruling party, to put targeted states on the defensive."(4)
That is, the goal is to either get enough support to sway the election in their favor, or, if that isn't possible, to give the impression that the elections were fraudulent and encourage the population to overturn them. The strategy has been so successful in overthrowing regimes, or installing the regimes that the U.S. prefers, that the operation has evolved into a blueprint to be used in countries around the world. Ian Traynor described it in the Guardian in November 2004 as follows:
"[T]he campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavory regimes...The operation - engineering democracy through the ballot box and civil disobedience - is now so slick that the methods have matured into a template for winning other people's elections"(5)
Manufacturing a "Ukrainian" in Venezuela
These days the U.S. has a new arch nemesis; Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Surely Washington would be delighted to get rid of him in the same fashion as all the rest. But there is one small problem; Hugo Chavez is no Slobodan Milosovic. He is immensely popular among the masses in Venezuela and throughout Latin America. Pro-Chavez parties have continued to win democratic elections over the last 8 years, and will most certainly win again in the December 3rd presidential contest. This time U.S. forces have their work cut out for them. They know that it is basically impossible to beat Chavez at the ballot box; he's too popular. It looks like they will have to go to plan B: a coup d'etat.The U.S. has already set up camp in Venezuela, and all the original cast members are here. We've got NED, USAID, and yes, once again, Penn, Schoen & Berland. Just like in Serbia, or Ukraine, the objective of the U.S. forces is to remove Chavez from power. Therefore they have teamed up with major opposition groups to map out and implement their strategy. The strategy in Venezuela takes from many of the important lessons that they first learned in Serbia, and have since been carried to many other nations. The goal is to create a situation like in Ukraine in 2004: huge protests against the elections and against the government in order to cause chaos and instability. Basically, it comes in three parts.
First, they need to build up popular support for the opposition candidate, Manuel Rosales, by designing an attractive campaign. This has already been accomplished, in part, but according to most polls Rosales only has about 20 to 30 percent voter intention, compared to Chavez who hovers between 50 and 60 percent.(6) However, it appears support for Rosales has grown a few percentage points in the latest polls as the candidate has crossed the country giving speeches and making promises over the last few months. The major media, of course, gives his campaign nightly coverage, and repeats all of his campaign messages. The campaign is U.S.-designed and uses modern marketing techniques, and catchy slogans. As shown in the 2005 documentary movie "Our Brand Is Crisis", about a U.S. team who designed the campaign of their favored candidate in Bolivia, these brilliant campaigns use sophisticated methods to create exactly the image they need for their candidate. They tend to target youth, and often include youth movements as they have with Primero Justica (Justice First) in Venezuela. The branding of the campaign with a color, and a one-word slogan is an important part of the U.S.-designed campaigns. In Serbia is the slogan was "Otpor", meaning resistance. In Georgia is was "Kmara" (Enough!). In Ukraine, "Pora", means "It's Time!", and now, in Venezuela, the brand is "Atrevete," roughly translated as "Be bold!"
The second step has been to use the mass media to create the perception that the elections are fraudulent. They have done this in a variety of ways. The NED has funded an organization, Sumate (one-word slogan that means "join up"), with the expressed goal of "achieving a high level of citizen participation in Venezuelan elections. "(7) Founded in 2002,
Sumate organized the campaign for the recall referendum to revoke Chavez's presidential term. They lost the recall vote in August 2004 by a large margin, but went on to claim, with the help of Penn, Schoen, and Berland's "exit polls," that the election was fraudulent. Five other polls showed exactly the opposite and concurred with the official voting results in which Chavez won by a wide margin. PSB and Sumate, however, maintained that the opposition had won and that Chavez had committed "massive fraud" in spite of the fact that 5 of the 6 polls concurred with the official results, and that the voting process was certified by both the Carter Center and the Organization of American States.(8) Consequently, Chavez's image as a democratically elected leader was damaged both nationally and internationally. The fraud claim resonated through the major media, and planted doubts about Chavez's legitimacy.
Since the recall referendum, the campaign has been non-stop. Sumate and other opposition groups continue to attack the electoral process in Venezuela, claiming it is not transparent and unfairly controlled by the Chavez government. The major media in Venezuela have wholeheartedly supported this campaign giving coverage to Sumate, and their constant press releases denouncing problems with the electoral process. The idea is to decieve enough people into believing that the Chavez regime is not popularly supported, but is holding on to power through fraudulent elections. They have already been fairly successful in convincing a percentage of the population.
Finally, they must get enough people out into the streets in order to create a situation in which a transition of power could take place. Here is where Penn, Schoen & Berland comes in. In the recent months in the lead up to the December 2006 elections, Penn, Schoen & Berland has been instrumental in shaping public perception. In a series of election polls widely covered in the private media, the polling firm has consistently shown that Chavez's lead is shrinking, and the opposition is gaining momentum, while all of the other surveys done over the last few months show that Chavez maintains a wide lead of between 20 and 30 percent.(9) Last week, Mr. Schoen, of Penn, Schoen & Berland, released the findings of his latest survey on the Venezuelan evening news. As expected, Penn's survey showed that Chavez's opposition, Manuel Rosales, was nearly tied in the polls with Chavez. Chavez, it showed, had only 48% support, and his opponent Manuel Rosales had gained significantly up to 42%. This poll is now being reported across all the major Venezuelan media, to a huge audience, showing that Rosales was gaining more and more everyday, and could possibly win. Mr. Schoen added his personal opinion, "The momentum is clearly with Rosales."(10)With the help of the mainstream media, almost all of which is vehemently opposed to the popular president, these fake polls have reached a wide audience. All the newspapers, the major television channels, and internet news sites report the poll results as if they were true, valid, findings. They don't mention the fact that these findings are not supported by any other polling agency. Again, although the reality is that Rosales has almost no chance of winning in the December elections, much of the population now believes he will. The reality doesn't seem to matter, all that really matters is what the population believes. When their candidate loses by a large margin, it will be a difficult reality to deal with. If the opposition strategy works, it might be possible to produce large protests and even riots.Two weeks ago, on Globovision, one of the major private channels in Venezuela, opposition leader Rafael Poleo called on Venezuelans to do the "Ukrainian" on the day after the elections.(11) Claiming the elections will be fraudulent, Poleo, who was involved in the 2002 coup attempt, described in detail a "plan" to remove Chavez from power after the elections. Comparing it to the "Orange Revolution", the plan calls for Venezuelans to come out en masse to protest against the Chavez government and what they call "fraudulent elections." Poleo then made a call to the high military command to back this "movement", in what basically amounts to a call to overthrow the government.Two weeks from now, we'll see how all of this plays out. Will the popular Chavez continue to rule as the president of the masses? Or, will the U.S.-trained opposition be able to pull off a "Ukrainian" in Venezuela? The opposition's claims of fraud are totally baseless, and even from the most superficial observation, it is clear that Chavez maintains overwhelming support. But, the U.S.-organized strategy seeks to produce mass protests and perhaps military rebellion to unseat their popular enemy. With the help of Penn, Schoen & Berland, they just might get enough people in the streets to cause some trouble. For the coup planners, that's exactly what they need.
____________________
(1) John Lancaster, "U.S. Funds Help Milosevic's Foes in Election Fight," Washington Post, September 19, 2000.http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A13155-2000Sep15¬Found=true(2) Jonathan Mowat, 'Coup d'État in Disguise: Washington's New World Order "Democratization" Template', Center for Research on Globalization, 9 February 2005, http://globalresearch.ca/articles/MOW502A.html(3) Michael Barker, "Regulating revolutions in Eastern Europe; Polyarchy and the National Endowment for Democracy"http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=11311(4) Jonathan Mowat, 'Coup d'État in Disguise: Washington's New World Order "Democratization" Template', Center for Research on Globalization, February 9, 2005, http://globalresearch.ca/articles/MOW502A.html(5) Ian Traynor, "US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev" The Guardian, November 2004http://www.guardian.co.uk/ukraine/story/0,15569,1360236,00.html(6) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_presidential_election,_2006#Polls(7) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Súmate(8) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_recall_referendum_of_2004 (9) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_presidential_election,_2006#Polls(10) "Venezuela Presidential Race Tightens,"
 Thursday, November 16(11) http://youtube.com/watch?v=UT02dOmjb1shttp://www.gringoinvenezuela.com/
Top of page
Fair use notice of copyrighted material:This site contains some copyrighted material that in some cases has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance the understanding of politics, human rights, the economy, democracy, and social justice issues related to Venezuela. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner
In my opinion these oposition media, especially the radio and television stations, need to be shut down. The airwaves belong to the nation, not to a bunch of sell outs, racists and traitors who work in tandem with a foriegn power to harm the country's well being by spreading lies and panic.
That's also something we here in the US and perhaps people of other countries should think about as well.
Coup d'État in Venezuela: Made in the USA
Wednesday, Nov 22, 2006
Print format
Send by email
By: Chris Carlson - Gringo in Venezuela
In 1999, when the U.S.-led bombing campaign in Serbia didn't get rid of Slobodan Milosovic, Washington changed its strategy. U.S. intelligence organized a $77 million effort to oust Milosovic through the ballot box. They sent in CIA front organizations funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Instead of guns and bombs, these U.S. forces were armed with fax machines, computers, and perhaps most importantly, sophisticated surveys done by the Washington-based polling firm Penn, Schoen & Berland.(1) Their mission: to take down Milosovic by strengthening opposition groups. Milosovic is now long gone, as the U.S. effort to mobilize the opposition and produce mass protests was successful in unseating him in the 2000 elections. This victory was a landmark for U.S. intelligence agencies. They had developed a new way to overthrow unfriendly regimes, and it was much easier than a violent overthrow, or a messy invasion. Penn, Schoen & Berland had played an important role; so important that the U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright commended them, saying "This may be one of the first instances where polling has played such an important role in setting and securing foreign policy objectives."(2) They did, indeed, secure their foreign policy objectives. Milosovic was out, and the U.S.-backed opposition took power.
Since 2000, this smooth new strategy to influence elections and topple regimes has been implemented in many other countries. Dubbed as the "post-modern coup" by Jonathan Mowat, the same brilliant techniques were used in Belarus in 2001, in Georgia in 2003, and in the Ukraine in 2004, to name a few. Although it ultimately failed in Belarus, in Georgia the U.S. effort produced the "Rose Revolution" which overthrew President Eduard Shevardnadze. In the Ukraine it was the "Orange Revolution" that installed Victor Yushchenko in 2004.(3) Each time, groups financed by the NED, and USAID worked inside the country to build popular support for the opposition candidate. Each time they constructed an appealing campaign image using the modern marketing tactics that they have perfected along the way. And each time, they used Penn, Schoen & Berland election "polls" to shape the public's perception. In his article, "Coup D'etat in Disguise," Jonathan Mowat described how these "polls" work:
"Penn, Schoen and Berland (PSB) has played a pioneering role in the use of polling operations, especially "exit polls," in facilitating coups. Its primary mission is to shape the perception that the group installed into power in a targeted country has broad popular support. ""...the deployment of polling agencies' "exit polls" broadcast on international television...give the false impression of massive vote-fraud by the ruling party, to put targeted states on the defensive."(4)
That is, the goal is to either get enough support to sway the election in their favor, or, if that isn't possible, to give the impression that the elections were fraudulent and encourage the population to overturn them. The strategy has been so successful in overthrowing regimes, or installing the regimes that the U.S. prefers, that the operation has evolved into a blueprint to be used in countries around the world. Ian Traynor described it in the Guardian in November 2004 as follows:
"[T]he campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavory regimes...The operation - engineering democracy through the ballot box and civil disobedience - is now so slick that the methods have matured into a template for winning other people's elections"(5)
Manufacturing a "Ukrainian" in Venezuela
These days the U.S. has a new arch nemesis; Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Surely Washington would be delighted to get rid of him in the same fashion as all the rest. But there is one small problem; Hugo Chavez is no Slobodan Milosovic. He is immensely popular among the masses in Venezuela and throughout Latin America. Pro-Chavez parties have continued to win democratic elections over the last 8 years, and will most certainly win again in the December 3rd presidential contest. This time U.S. forces have their work cut out for them. They know that it is basically impossible to beat Chavez at the ballot box; he's too popular. It looks like they will have to go to plan B: a coup d'etat.The U.S. has already set up camp in Venezuela, and all the original cast members are here. We've got NED, USAID, and yes, once again, Penn, Schoen & Berland. Just like in Serbia, or Ukraine, the objective of the U.S. forces is to remove Chavez from power. Therefore they have teamed up with major opposition groups to map out and implement their strategy. The strategy in Venezuela takes from many of the important lessons that they first learned in Serbia, and have since been carried to many other nations. The goal is to create a situation like in Ukraine in 2004: huge protests against the elections and against the government in order to cause chaos and instability. Basically, it comes in three parts.
First, they need to build up popular support for the opposition candidate, Manuel Rosales, by designing an attractive campaign. This has already been accomplished, in part, but according to most polls Rosales only has about 20 to 30 percent voter intention, compared to Chavez who hovers between 50 and 60 percent.(6) However, it appears support for Rosales has grown a few percentage points in the latest polls as the candidate has crossed the country giving speeches and making promises over the last few months. The major media, of course, gives his campaign nightly coverage, and repeats all of his campaign messages. The campaign is U.S.-designed and uses modern marketing techniques, and catchy slogans. As shown in the 2005 documentary movie "Our Brand Is Crisis", about a U.S. team who designed the campaign of their favored candidate in Bolivia, these brilliant campaigns use sophisticated methods to create exactly the image they need for their candidate. They tend to target youth, and often include youth movements as they have with Primero Justica (Justice First) in Venezuela. The branding of the campaign with a color, and a one-word slogan is an important part of the U.S.-designed campaigns. In Serbia is the slogan was "Otpor", meaning resistance. In Georgia is was "Kmara" (Enough!). In Ukraine, "Pora", means "It's Time!", and now, in Venezuela, the brand is "Atrevete," roughly translated as "Be bold!"
The second step has been to use the mass media to create the perception that the elections are fraudulent. They have done this in a variety of ways. The NED has funded an organization, Sumate (one-word slogan that means "join up"), with the expressed goal of "achieving a high level of citizen participation in Venezuelan elections. "(7) Founded in 2002,
Sumate organized the campaign for the recall referendum to revoke Chavez's presidential term. They lost the recall vote in August 2004 by a large margin, but went on to claim, with the help of Penn, Schoen, and Berland's "exit polls," that the election was fraudulent. Five other polls showed exactly the opposite and concurred with the official voting results in which Chavez won by a wide margin. PSB and Sumate, however, maintained that the opposition had won and that Chavez had committed "massive fraud" in spite of the fact that 5 of the 6 polls concurred with the official results, and that the voting process was certified by both the Carter Center and the Organization of American States.(8) Consequently, Chavez's image as a democratically elected leader was damaged both nationally and internationally. The fraud claim resonated through the major media, and planted doubts about Chavez's legitimacy.
Since the recall referendum, the campaign has been non-stop. Sumate and other opposition groups continue to attack the electoral process in Venezuela, claiming it is not transparent and unfairly controlled by the Chavez government. The major media in Venezuela have wholeheartedly supported this campaign giving coverage to Sumate, and their constant press releases denouncing problems with the electoral process. The idea is to decieve enough people into believing that the Chavez regime is not popularly supported, but is holding on to power through fraudulent elections. They have already been fairly successful in convincing a percentage of the population.
Finally, they must get enough people out into the streets in order to create a situation in which a transition of power could take place. Here is where Penn, Schoen & Berland comes in. In the recent months in the lead up to the December 2006 elections, Penn, Schoen & Berland has been instrumental in shaping public perception. In a series of election polls widely covered in the private media, the polling firm has consistently shown that Chavez's lead is shrinking, and the opposition is gaining momentum, while all of the other surveys done over the last few months show that Chavez maintains a wide lead of between 20 and 30 percent.(9) Last week, Mr. Schoen, of Penn, Schoen & Berland, released the findings of his latest survey on the Venezuelan evening news. As expected, Penn's survey showed that Chavez's opposition, Manuel Rosales, was nearly tied in the polls with Chavez. Chavez, it showed, had only 48% support, and his opponent Manuel Rosales had gained significantly up to 42%. This poll is now being reported across all the major Venezuelan media, to a huge audience, showing that Rosales was gaining more and more everyday, and could possibly win. Mr. Schoen added his personal opinion, "The momentum is clearly with Rosales."(10)With the help of the mainstream media, almost all of which is vehemently opposed to the popular president, these fake polls have reached a wide audience. All the newspapers, the major television channels, and internet news sites report the poll results as if they were true, valid, findings. They don't mention the fact that these findings are not supported by any other polling agency. Again, although the reality is that Rosales has almost no chance of winning in the December elections, much of the population now believes he will. The reality doesn't seem to matter, all that really matters is what the population believes. When their candidate loses by a large margin, it will be a difficult reality to deal with. If the opposition strategy works, it might be possible to produce large protests and even riots.Two weeks ago, on Globovision, one of the major private channels in Venezuela, opposition leader Rafael Poleo called on Venezuelans to do the "Ukrainian" on the day after the elections.(11) Claiming the elections will be fraudulent, Poleo, who was involved in the 2002 coup attempt, described in detail a "plan" to remove Chavez from power after the elections. Comparing it to the "Orange Revolution", the plan calls for Venezuelans to come out en masse to protest against the Chavez government and what they call "fraudulent elections." Poleo then made a call to the high military command to back this "movement", in what basically amounts to a call to overthrow the government.Two weeks from now, we'll see how all of this plays out. Will the popular Chavez continue to rule as the president of the masses? Or, will the U.S.-trained opposition be able to pull off a "Ukrainian" in Venezuela? The opposition's claims of fraud are totally baseless, and even from the most superficial observation, it is clear that Chavez maintains overwhelming support. But, the U.S.-organized strategy seeks to produce mass protests and perhaps military rebellion to unseat their popular enemy. With the help of Penn, Schoen & Berland, they just might get enough people in the streets to cause some trouble. For the coup planners, that's exactly what they need.
____________________
(1) John Lancaster, "U.S. Funds Help Milosevic's Foes in Election Fight," Washington Post, September 19, 2000.http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A13155-2000Sep15¬Found=true(2) Jonathan Mowat, 'Coup d'État in Disguise: Washington's New World Order "Democratization" Template', Center for Research on Globalization, 9 February 2005, http://globalresearch.ca/articles/MOW502A.html(3) Michael Barker, "Regulating revolutions in Eastern Europe; Polyarchy and the National Endowment for Democracy"http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=11311(4) Jonathan Mowat, 'Coup d'État in Disguise: Washington's New World Order "Democratization" Template', Center for Research on Globalization, February 9, 2005, http://globalresearch.ca/articles/MOW502A.html(5) Ian Traynor, "US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev" The Guardian, November 2004http://www.guardian.co.uk/ukraine/story/0,15569,1360236,00.html(6) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_presidential_election,_2006#Polls(7) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Súmate(8) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_recall_referendum_of_2004 (9) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_presidential_election,_2006#Polls(10) "Venezuela Presidential Race Tightens,"
 Thursday, November 16(11) http://youtube.com/watch?v=UT02dOmjb1shttp://www.gringoinvenezuela.com/
Top of page
Fair use notice of copyrighted material:This site contains some copyrighted material that in some cases has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance the understanding of politics, human rights, the economy, democracy, and social justice issues related to Venezuela. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner
“We killed Jesus, we’ll kill you too!”- Mob of Judaists seriously injure Swedish Teen, No Arrests by Israhell Police
When I was a boy I decided that I would have a real religious bar mitzvah even though my parents were not religious (in the widely understood sense of that word) and so I was enrolled in an after school Hebrew School at Congregation Adath Israel, studied my parsha, learned to read Hebrew phonetically and went through the ceremony. In Hebrew school we had a discussion about the accusation that "the Jews" had killed Jesus. The term "Christ Killer" had been hurled against me and probably everyone else in the room, and it hurt me a lot. The teacher told us that the cry of "Christ Killer" is a lie, that Pontius Pilate and the Romans had killed Jesus, and that Jesus does not appear in our religion in any sense, positive or negative. Most Jews probably subscribe to this opinion today, however it doesn't exactly fit reality.
It seems that in this day and age there are Jews who are taught that indeed "The Jews" did kill Jesus the man and they actually revel in it.
Streets of Hate: a journal entry on attacks in Hebron November 20th, 2006 Posted in Journals, Hebron Region
by aspiringnomad, November 20th
His panic-stricken little face lights up when he receives the information that we’ll escort him home, sending him skipping merrily down the road on an errand to buy potatoes. This is the Palestinian Authority controlled area of Hebron, and as we cross through Tel Rumeida checkpoint to the other side in order to wait for the Palestinian boy’s return, we soon discover the source of his fear.
We are confronted by around 100 ultra-orthodox Jews, who are gathered in Hebron to mark ‘Hebron day’, one of whom shouts “You know that Jesus is gay?”. None of us really react to this arbitrary taunt, however it does serve to focus the crowd’s attentions squarely on our small group of human rights workers. Another shouts “What are you doing here?”
“Tourists” I reply, believing this to be the safest response under the circumstances. The crowd then begins chanting in Hebrew “We killed Jesus, we’ll kill you too!” — we are quickly designated the ‘other’. The mob mentality takes on an oppressive and ugly turn; now almost a single entity justifying almost any excess as long as it is directed towards the ‘other’. The crowd edges forward “You love Palestinians” one of them shouts, spitting in a human rights worker’s face.
The first stone had been cast: saliva rains down on us and people jump above one another to be able to deliver their contempt. We are shoved and kicked repeatedly, and even though it is apparent that events are spiraling dangerously out of control, the soldiers who are standing just a few feet behind us at the checkpoint choose to look on impotently as the attacks intensify.
A man lunges from the crowd, smashing Tove, a 19 year old Swedish girl across the face with a bottle. She immediately collapses to the ground clutching her bloodied face in horrified terror. At this point the soldiers come forward and motion at the settlers, in a “ok… that’s enough guys…” motion, amid clapping, cheering and chanting from the crowd.
As Tove lay on the hard concrete floor, blood oozing from her wounds the crowd re-groups, fed by curiosity and growing in energy “We killed Jesus, we’ll kill you too!” I now felt a growing sense of apprehension as awareness dawned of the mob’s evil intent and the soldiers’ unwillingness to intervene in any meaningful way.
A religiously dressed Orthodox Jew then adds insult to injury by posing with a thumbs-up gesture over Tove’s bloodied face. The sight of this was so obnoxiously contemptuous I never gave the guy the satisfaction he sadistically craved by taking his picture. The decision as to whether I should have taken that picture has been discussed over and over by people I know, though I feel the impact of sharing that disgusting image I have etched in my mind, can serve no purpose other than that of breeding hatred.
The police arrived and an American girl who witnessed the event was taken into a police van and asked to identify who had attacked our group. Meanwhile the remaining police were telling me and another Englishman that if we didn’t move away from the scene we would be arrested as we were blocking the street. We remained.
A Jewish settler medic came to the scene about 15 minutes after the attack and immediately began asking us why we were in Hebron, telling us pointedly we had no right to be there. He refused to help Tove as she lay bleeding in the street .
Eventually Tove was helped onto a stretcher by some soldiers, amid jeers and clapping from the crowd. We escorted the stretcher through the jeering crowd to a military vehicle in which Tove and a close friend were transported to the hospital in Jerusalem.
As I walked back down the street I witnessed the police open the door of a van and release one of the attackers. Upon seeing this the crowd then began jubilantly celebrating his release. We were later told by the police that they had not even taken the names of those who were identified as having attacked us, and that one of the main assailants had simply told the police that he was due at the airport in two hours to fly back to France.
Two Englishmen and I then spent another half an hour or so escorting Palestinian women and children from the checkpoint to their homes. In doing so it is our aim to protect the Palestinians in such situations by deflecting the attention and hate away from them.
It was getting dark but the streets were still busy. We escorted one group of three boys, the oldest of whom was 9 or 10. We were followed closely along the street by a dozen or so Orthodox Jews who hissed and berated the Palestinian boys in Arabic with obscenities I am grateful of not understanding. “You like protecting the animals?”, they taunted us in English — “Nazis!”.
We reached some steps and turned off the main street and began to climb, the little boys nervously glancing back to see if we would be pursued. A couple of hundred metres further on the older boy made it clear they were OK to continue alone now. I asked the oldest boy if they were sure, he forced a smile and shrugged his soldiers in defiance as if to say “no problem this stuff happens every day”. He seemed so strong, but as I put my hand on his shoulder and looked into his teary eyes they gave out another message and I saw pain and fear.
I wanted to tell him that the world wasn’t really like this. But for him and the people of Tel Rumeida it is.
Earlier in the day at least five Palestinians, including a 3-year old child, were injured by Jewish settlers, who rampaged through Tel Rumeida hurling stones and bottles at local residents. Palestinian schoolchildren on their way home were also attacked. The Israeli “Defense” Force, which was intensively deployed in the area, did not intervene to stop the settlers.
See this ISM Hebron report on these events.
It seems that in this day and age there are Jews who are taught that indeed "The Jews" did kill Jesus the man and they actually revel in it.
Streets of Hate: a journal entry on attacks in Hebron November 20th, 2006 Posted in Journals, Hebron Region
by aspiringnomad, November 20th
His panic-stricken little face lights up when he receives the information that we’ll escort him home, sending him skipping merrily down the road on an errand to buy potatoes. This is the Palestinian Authority controlled area of Hebron, and as we cross through Tel Rumeida checkpoint to the other side in order to wait for the Palestinian boy’s return, we soon discover the source of his fear.
We are confronted by around 100 ultra-orthodox Jews, who are gathered in Hebron to mark ‘Hebron day’, one of whom shouts “You know that Jesus is gay?”. None of us really react to this arbitrary taunt, however it does serve to focus the crowd’s attentions squarely on our small group of human rights workers. Another shouts “What are you doing here?”
“Tourists” I reply, believing this to be the safest response under the circumstances. The crowd then begins chanting in Hebrew “We killed Jesus, we’ll kill you too!” — we are quickly designated the ‘other’. The mob mentality takes on an oppressive and ugly turn; now almost a single entity justifying almost any excess as long as it is directed towards the ‘other’. The crowd edges forward “You love Palestinians” one of them shouts, spitting in a human rights worker’s face.
The first stone had been cast: saliva rains down on us and people jump above one another to be able to deliver their contempt. We are shoved and kicked repeatedly, and even though it is apparent that events are spiraling dangerously out of control, the soldiers who are standing just a few feet behind us at the checkpoint choose to look on impotently as the attacks intensify.
A man lunges from the crowd, smashing Tove, a 19 year old Swedish girl across the face with a bottle. She immediately collapses to the ground clutching her bloodied face in horrified terror. At this point the soldiers come forward and motion at the settlers, in a “ok… that’s enough guys…” motion, amid clapping, cheering and chanting from the crowd.
As Tove lay on the hard concrete floor, blood oozing from her wounds the crowd re-groups, fed by curiosity and growing in energy “We killed Jesus, we’ll kill you too!” I now felt a growing sense of apprehension as awareness dawned of the mob’s evil intent and the soldiers’ unwillingness to intervene in any meaningful way.
A religiously dressed Orthodox Jew then adds insult to injury by posing with a thumbs-up gesture over Tove’s bloodied face. The sight of this was so obnoxiously contemptuous I never gave the guy the satisfaction he sadistically craved by taking his picture. The decision as to whether I should have taken that picture has been discussed over and over by people I know, though I feel the impact of sharing that disgusting image I have etched in my mind, can serve no purpose other than that of breeding hatred.
The police arrived and an American girl who witnessed the event was taken into a police van and asked to identify who had attacked our group. Meanwhile the remaining police were telling me and another Englishman that if we didn’t move away from the scene we would be arrested as we were blocking the street. We remained.
A Jewish settler medic came to the scene about 15 minutes after the attack and immediately began asking us why we were in Hebron, telling us pointedly we had no right to be there. He refused to help Tove as she lay bleeding in the street .
Eventually Tove was helped onto a stretcher by some soldiers, amid jeers and clapping from the crowd. We escorted the stretcher through the jeering crowd to a military vehicle in which Tove and a close friend were transported to the hospital in Jerusalem.
As I walked back down the street I witnessed the police open the door of a van and release one of the attackers. Upon seeing this the crowd then began jubilantly celebrating his release. We were later told by the police that they had not even taken the names of those who were identified as having attacked us, and that one of the main assailants had simply told the police that he was due at the airport in two hours to fly back to France.
Two Englishmen and I then spent another half an hour or so escorting Palestinian women and children from the checkpoint to their homes. In doing so it is our aim to protect the Palestinians in such situations by deflecting the attention and hate away from them.
It was getting dark but the streets were still busy. We escorted one group of three boys, the oldest of whom was 9 or 10. We were followed closely along the street by a dozen or so Orthodox Jews who hissed and berated the Palestinian boys in Arabic with obscenities I am grateful of not understanding. “You like protecting the animals?”, they taunted us in English — “Nazis!”.
We reached some steps and turned off the main street and began to climb, the little boys nervously glancing back to see if we would be pursued. A couple of hundred metres further on the older boy made it clear they were OK to continue alone now. I asked the oldest boy if they were sure, he forced a smile and shrugged his soldiers in defiance as if to say “no problem this stuff happens every day”. He seemed so strong, but as I put my hand on his shoulder and looked into his teary eyes they gave out another message and I saw pain and fear.
I wanted to tell him that the world wasn’t really like this. But for him and the people of Tel Rumeida it is.
Earlier in the day at least five Palestinians, including a 3-year old child, were injured by Jewish settlers, who rampaged through Tel Rumeida hurling stones and bottles at local residents. Palestinian schoolchildren on their way home were also attacked. The Israeli “Defense” Force, which was intensively deployed in the area, did not intervene to stop the settlers.
See this ISM Hebron report on these events.
Sunday, November 19, 2006
You Don't Hve To Be Jewish To Sign This Petition
To: Those in solidarity with the Palestinian People
There are individuals within the Palestinian solidarity movement
seeking to create divisions by:
* deliberately shifting focus away from Israel's war crimes and
its supremacist Zionist ideology;
* imposing unilateral agendas by presenting both sides
as victims;
* sabotaging service to the just cause of the Palestinian
people;
* ignoring the issue of right of return for the
Palestinians;
* utilising the platform of the Palestinian discourse to
argue about anti-Semitism, which is not a Palestinian problem
and not created by Arabs.
Our primary and single concern is solidarity with the
Palestinian people.
As ethical human beings we consider it our obligation to:
* do all we can to allow the information to be diffused as
widely and as quickly as possible;
* ensure the argument of the oppression and disenfranchisement
of the Palestinian people stays in the forefront;
* present as clear and honest a picture as possible of the
meaning of Zionism and the Jewish State;
* to cross the divide and to unite in our war against the
Zionist crime.
We accept and believe in equality of all persons, regardless
of their race, religion, political or other orientation. We
believe that full and unconditional support of the Palestinian
people is a condition sine qua non for activists to adopt, and
we recognise that their attachment to their homeland is a
fundamental and unalterable condition. To that end we advocate
for one unified State with equal rights for all its citizens.
Any attempts at censoring reasoned critique of Israel and Zionism
must be refused a priori, as it is in conflict with the goal of
seeking to protect and support the Palestinian people - as their
empowerment is the only way to peaceful coexistence for all the
populations of the Middle East. Any attempts at dictating what the
Palestinians should do will be looked upon with great circumspection
and suspicion. Palestinians themselves wish to construct their
own future and are not pawns to be shifted on the chessboard.
We demand free speech for sincere critics of Zionism and call
for an end to campaigns created in order to ostracise its most
vocal critics. Smear campaigns will not be tolerated, as we
recognise that they are the instrument of choice of Zionists,
and detract energy from our work. We will not hesitate to expose
the instrumental usage of them, no matter the claimed principles of
those who are engaged in creating such campaigns. On the other hand,
open dialogue and reasoned argumentation is welcome and greatly
encouraged as a tool to understanding and collaboration.
The indigenous people of Palestine are facing extermination by the
hands of the Jewish State, and the world keeps silent. The sooner we
draw public attention to Israel's needless wanton destruction, the
sooner we can do away with this horrifying, insufferable situation.
Sincerely,
Saturday, November 18, 2006
An Open Letter To Amy Goodman (and to you).
Democracy Now!
87 Lafayette St.,
Ground Floor
New York, NY 10013
Dear Amy Goodman :
On May 2, 2005, more than seventeen months ago, Administration For Children's Services Commissioner John Mattingly appeared on your program to discuss the scandal, or uproar around the forced use of foster children for HIV drug trials. As you may recall this matter had been brought to the attention of the public in December of 2004, almost two years ago, when BBC aired the documentary "Guinea Pig Kids, as your program had reported as well.
I am a ten year veteran Administration for Children's Services child abuse investigator who has been following the issue closely.
John Mattingly promised that an investigation would take place while he was on your program and he agreed to "continue to talk (with you) about this process of investigation."
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/02/1348210
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you very much for being with us, Commissioner of Administration of Children’s Services, ACS, John Mattingly. We hope to continue to talk to you about this process of investigation.
JOHN MATTINGLY: I’d be glad to.
AMY GOODMAN: Thank you.
As you also may remember Mattingly engaged the Vera Institute of Justice to conduct an investigation. As you might also remember, Mattingly had originally told the media and City Council that the AIDS experiments had involved 65 children. Later this figure was revised to "approximately 465" children after case records were "found in the basement."
Mattingly met with the City Council on May 5, 2005, and December 20, 2005 to discuss the investigation.
Well, the investigation seems to be in gridlock, and there seems not to be any media attention to this situation.
In the Vera Institute's fourth quarterly progress report http://www.vera.org/project/project1_1.asp?section_id=5&project_id=79 dated July 2006 the investigators say:
Summary: During this quarter we hired and trained additional staff. By the end of June, the file
review staff included eight reviewers of child welfare documents and three reviewers of medical
documents. We also hired two summer interns to conduct background research and literature
reviews. Officials from New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services (Children’s
Services) believe that approximately 465 children participated in clinical trials. As of the end of
this quarter, we have reviewed 167 child welfare case management files, 75 child welfare case
planning files, 52 medical case management files, and 77 medical case planning files. Vera’s
Clinical Trials Advisory Board met in May. That same month, project staff informally briefed
the City Council. Throughout the quarter, project staff continued working with Children’s
Services’ HIV/AIDS Health Care Advisory Board to refine the agency’s current policy for
enrolling and monitoring foster children in clinical trials.
Buried in a footnote is a very interesting tidbit:
2 The large volume of case planning files made copying and storing files at Children’s Services impractical due to
the cost of duplication, risks to confidentiality in the copying process, and limits on space at Children’s Services.
In other words the investigation is being hobled by lack of adequate funds and even of space to work in.
Things get even dicier as we see when we read the fifth quarterly progress report dated October, 2006.
Summary: Vera staff continue to review the files of children who the Administration for
Children’s Services (Children’s Services) believes participated in HIV/AIDS clinical trials. By
the end of September, of the approximately 465 cases forwarded to Vera by Children’s Services,
our child welfare document review team had examined 235 case management files and 170 case
planning files.3 The medical document review team had looked at 149 case management files
and 165 case planning files. Efforts are ongoing to locate 26 case management files and 58 case
planning files that Vera had planned to review during this quarter.
In the course of reviewing these documents, Vera staff and staff at Children’s Services identified
61 additional children who had participated in clinical trials while in foster care, bringing the
total number of known cases to 526. Project staff briefed Vera’s Clinical Trials Advisory Board,
the Children’s Services’ HIV/AIDS Health Care Advisory Board, the New York City Mayor’s
Office, and the City Council on these additions. Just after the close of the quarter, Vera’s
Institutional Review Board approved the protocols for interviewing children who had
participated in the clinical trials and their caregivers.
Frankly what we are seeing here is a slow motion non-investigation.
I would hope that the drug trials themselves, the selection of unrepresented foster children, and the reports by the docotrs and scientists involved in them were conducted with much more care than this investigation, especially since journalist Liam Scheff asserts that he knows of two children who died as a result of the tests, and especially since children under the age of eighteen months who tested positive for HIV were subjected to these phase I and Phase II experiments and they can be said to have been "presumably HIV positive."
Don't you think it's time for some more investigative reporting?
Sincerely,
Eugene Weixel
xxx West xxx Street ccC
New York, NY 10027
917-680-5034
cc:
John Mattingly
Bill DeBlasio
The Good People of New York City, and the world.
87 Lafayette St.,
Ground Floor
New York, NY 10013
Dear Amy Goodman :
On May 2, 2005, more than seventeen months ago, Administration For Children's Services Commissioner John Mattingly appeared on your program to discuss the scandal, or uproar around the forced use of foster children for HIV drug trials. As you may recall this matter had been brought to the attention of the public in December of 2004, almost two years ago, when BBC aired the documentary "Guinea Pig Kids, as your program had reported as well.
I am a ten year veteran Administration for Children's Services child abuse investigator who has been following the issue closely.
John Mattingly promised that an investigation would take place while he was on your program and he agreed to "continue to talk (with you) about this process of investigation."
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/02/1348210
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you very much for being with us, Commissioner of Administration of Children’s Services, ACS, John Mattingly. We hope to continue to talk to you about this process of investigation.
JOHN MATTINGLY: I’d be glad to.
AMY GOODMAN: Thank you.
As you also may remember Mattingly engaged the Vera Institute of Justice to conduct an investigation. As you might also remember, Mattingly had originally told the media and City Council that the AIDS experiments had involved 65 children. Later this figure was revised to "approximately 465" children after case records were "found in the basement."
Mattingly met with the City Council on May 5, 2005, and December 20, 2005 to discuss the investigation.
Well, the investigation seems to be in gridlock, and there seems not to be any media attention to this situation.
In the Vera Institute's fourth quarterly progress report http://www.vera.org/project/project1_1.asp?section_id=5&project_id=79 dated July 2006 the investigators say:
Summary: During this quarter we hired and trained additional staff. By the end of June, the file
review staff included eight reviewers of child welfare documents and three reviewers of medical
documents. We also hired two summer interns to conduct background research and literature
reviews. Officials from New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services (Children’s
Services) believe that approximately 465 children participated in clinical trials. As of the end of
this quarter, we have reviewed 167 child welfare case management files, 75 child welfare case
planning files, 52 medical case management files, and 77 medical case planning files. Vera’s
Clinical Trials Advisory Board met in May. That same month, project staff informally briefed
the City Council. Throughout the quarter, project staff continued working with Children’s
Services’ HIV/AIDS Health Care Advisory Board to refine the agency’s current policy for
enrolling and monitoring foster children in clinical trials.
Buried in a footnote is a very interesting tidbit:
2 The large volume of case planning files made copying and storing files at Children’s Services impractical due to
the cost of duplication, risks to confidentiality in the copying process, and limits on space at Children’s Services.
In other words the investigation is being hobled by lack of adequate funds and even of space to work in.
Things get even dicier as we see when we read the fifth quarterly progress report dated October, 2006.
Summary: Vera staff continue to review the files of children who the Administration for
Children’s Services (Children’s Services) believes participated in HIV/AIDS clinical trials. By
the end of September, of the approximately 465 cases forwarded to Vera by Children’s Services,
our child welfare document review team had examined 235 case management files and 170 case
planning files.3 The medical document review team had looked at 149 case management files
and 165 case planning files. Efforts are ongoing to locate 26 case management files and 58 case
planning files that Vera had planned to review during this quarter.
In the course of reviewing these documents, Vera staff and staff at Children’s Services identified
61 additional children who had participated in clinical trials while in foster care, bringing the
total number of known cases to 526. Project staff briefed Vera’s Clinical Trials Advisory Board,
the Children’s Services’ HIV/AIDS Health Care Advisory Board, the New York City Mayor’s
Office, and the City Council on these additions. Just after the close of the quarter, Vera’s
Institutional Review Board approved the protocols for interviewing children who had
participated in the clinical trials and their caregivers.
Frankly what we are seeing here is a slow motion non-investigation.
I would hope that the drug trials themselves, the selection of unrepresented foster children, and the reports by the docotrs and scientists involved in them were conducted with much more care than this investigation, especially since journalist Liam Scheff asserts that he knows of two children who died as a result of the tests, and especially since children under the age of eighteen months who tested positive for HIV were subjected to these phase I and Phase II experiments and they can be said to have been "presumably HIV positive."
Don't you think it's time for some more investigative reporting?
Sincerely,
Eugene Weixel
xxx West xxx Street ccC
New York, NY 10027
917-680-5034
cc:
John Mattingly
Bill DeBlasio
The Good People of New York City, and the world.
Friday, November 17, 2006
Police Brutality
this reminds me of a story...autobiographical: how i tripped (over a wrinkle in the uniform ...
this reminds me of a story...autobiographical: how i tripped (over a wrinkle in the uniform ...
"You Have To Leave, Or You'll Get Tazed Too."
Iranian-American Student Abused By UCLA UCPD With Tazer GUN
This video shows the racist, sadistic cops in California tazering an iranian - American student because he apparently forgot or lost his student ID card. This is the hateful racist and authortarian mindset of too many Americans, and it is these SOB's who are riding high.
Imagine, if you can, a small army of cop like "social workers" not very unlike these cops, but authorized to go into Black and Hispanic homes at all and any hour, to "investigate" families, with a blind eye turned to their carrying false IDs and even tazers. That was and is the Administration For Children's Services New York City "Division of Child protection" that I fought from the inside and continue to fight from the outside.
If you read through my email correspondences with the chain of command in ACS you'll see that a mentally unstable caseworker brought in a stun gun to the office and demonstrated it, saying that she always carries it to people's homes. When I brought this to the attention of management (I did not want to be forced to go into the field with this dangerous nut job) the walls and roof came down on me. Also this nut job had had as did approximately half the caseworkers, a fake ID badge that looked like an NYPD detective badge (and they probably still do). Actually I was also trying to prevent preempively just such a scene or much worse. For my troubles I became the target of shameful harassment approved all the way up the chain of command at least to Zeinab Chahine's level.
Administration for Children's Services was and is out of control. If you read my website ACSmustbestopped.com you'll see that they cannot even keep count of the Black and Hispanic foster children they turned over to be experimented upon with no proper oversight. You'll see that in the wake of the Nixzmary Brown media event (things like that happen all the time, with little or no media attention) they went berserk kidnapping Balck and Hispanic children and guess what? They can't even keep count of that operation either and it continues into this very day.
www.acsmustbestopped.com
This video shows the racist, sadistic cops in California tazering an iranian - American student because he apparently forgot or lost his student ID card. This is the hateful racist and authortarian mindset of too many Americans, and it is these SOB's who are riding high.
Imagine, if you can, a small army of cop like "social workers" not very unlike these cops, but authorized to go into Black and Hispanic homes at all and any hour, to "investigate" families, with a blind eye turned to their carrying false IDs and even tazers. That was and is the Administration For Children's Services New York City "Division of Child protection" that I fought from the inside and continue to fight from the outside.
If you read through my email correspondences with the chain of command in ACS you'll see that a mentally unstable caseworker brought in a stun gun to the office and demonstrated it, saying that she always carries it to people's homes. When I brought this to the attention of management (I did not want to be forced to go into the field with this dangerous nut job) the walls and roof came down on me. Also this nut job had had as did approximately half the caseworkers, a fake ID badge that looked like an NYPD detective badge (and they probably still do). Actually I was also trying to prevent preempively just such a scene or much worse. For my troubles I became the target of shameful harassment approved all the way up the chain of command at least to Zeinab Chahine's level.
Administration for Children's Services was and is out of control. If you read my website ACSmustbestopped.com you'll see that they cannot even keep count of the Black and Hispanic foster children they turned over to be experimented upon with no proper oversight. You'll see that in the wake of the Nixzmary Brown media event (things like that happen all the time, with little or no media attention) they went berserk kidnapping Balck and Hispanic children and guess what? They can't even keep count of that operation either and it continues into this very day.
www.acsmustbestopped.com
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Another Coup In Venezuela?
On April 11th, 2002, a group of businessman, politicians,
and military officers, in conjunction with the cooperation
of the major national media, kidnapped the president of
Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, and took over the national
government. Two days and 19 deaths later, the coup
d'etat ultimately failed and the president was returned
to power. The wealthy businessmen and oligarchs were
unable to get rid of the popular president of the masses.
However, recent events give the impression that they will
soon make another attempt.
command coincides with a similar call made by candidate Manuel
Rosales one day before. At a political rally, Rosales made
a call for a meeting with the high military command, "because
we have to be preparing for a transition and change of government
that will come to Venezuela in the near future," he said.
Rosales has yet to make the claim that the elections are fraudulent,
but he did call on the government to get rid of the "captahuella"
machines, which he had previously accepted as a condition of the
election. Rosales maintains that he will win at the ballot
box, although nearly all the polls show him to be trailing Chavez
by a large margin.
If it weren't for the 2002 coup attempt,
which occurred in a strikingly similar fashion, these words from
the opposition might not be as significant. But the 2002 coup
also began with large opposition protests against the government.
When violence broke out between pro and anti-government groups,
snipers and the Metropolitan police opened fire on innocent protesters
both from the Chavez camp and from the opposition. Next,
blaming the violence on the government, military officers
aligned with the opposition forced the president to leave office
under the threat that the Presidential Palace would be bombed.
Just as they appear to be doing now, the private media set the stage
for the coup after they made numerous calls for the people to come
out and march against Chavez. Later, with the intervention of
a group within the military they were almost successful in
overthrowing the government. Popular demonstrations forced
them to hand power back over Chavez, but the radical opposition
groups didn't go away, and they have continued their attempts to
destabilize the country in the years since.
On December
4th, it is almost certain that there will be large opposition protests
in the major cities of Venezuela. Since the private media
continues to report false surveys that show a possible victory
for the opposition, a large sector of the population now believes
that Rosales may hold the lead. When Chavez beats him at
ballot box, which is the obvious result according to most polls,
it will be a hard reality to accept for all those Venezuelans who
have been decieved by their major media's manipulation.
Rosales and the opposition leaders have called out to the people,
and to the military command. There will no doubt be protests
in the days following the elections, but will there be a coup?
and military officers, in conjunction with the cooperation
of the major national media, kidnapped the president of
Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, and took over the national
government. Two days and 19 deaths later, the coup
d'etat ultimately failed and the president was returned
to power. The wealthy businessmen and oligarchs were
unable to get rid of the popular president of the masses.
However, recent events give the impression that they will
soon make another attempt.
With most of the polls and surveys showing that Chavez has
a huge advantage in the upcoming December elections, there remains
little doubt about who will win the presidential elections on
December 3rd. However, the opposition candidates and
opposition media in Venezuela have a habit of claiming fraud every
time Chavez or his party win an election. The stage is already
being set for the upcoming elections, as mainstream media in
Venezuela constantly mention the possibility of fraud, and claims
the elections are not transparent. The question remains; how
can they claim fraud when dozens of surveys taken over the last few months
show that the election won't even be a close contest? And
secondly, why would the Chavez government commit fraud when it is
obvious that they will easily win? The answer: it is all part
of a plan to overthrow the government in the days following the
December 3rd election.
The opposition parties in Venezuela have been making claims of
fraudulent elections over the last few years. Often times
they focus on the "captahuella" machines, which take the voters
fingerprint to prevent them from voting more than once. Other
times the claims center on the CNE, the national electoral body which
oversees the elections. The opposition claims that this body
is totally under the control of the Chavez government. All of
these claims by the opposition are, of course, widely covered in the
private media, and have created the feeling that Venezuela has
unfair elections. So, for the December presidential elections, whether
people believe it or not, this is all more of the same old story.
Last week, however, leaders of the opposition stepped up their rhetoric
and discussed a "plan"
for the days surrounding the elections. Prominent journalistic
businessman Rafael Poleo, who was also involved in the 2002 coup attempt,
announced on the cable network Globovision the opposition "plan" for
December 3rd, 4th, and 5th. The plan calls for all voters
aligned with the opposition to come out and vote on December 3rd.
Then, on December 4th, claiming that the elections were fraudulent,
the opposition voters must take to the streets to protest the Chavez
victory. Referring to the "Orange Revolution," when popular
protests in Ukraine overturned fraudulent elections in 2004, Poleo
claims that the electoral fraud is already in place, and makes a call
for all Venezuelans who are opposed to Chavez to come out into the
streets and protest on December 4th. He emphasizes that Manuel
Rosales, the opposition candidate, must join this movement on December
4th and claim that the elections were fraudulent. If he does,
says Poleo, Rosales could become the most important person in 21st
century Venezuelan history.
With all of this in place, the plan continues with a call to the
high military command, in the words of Poleo, to "decide if it is
going to continue forcing the Venezuelan opposition to put up with
an embarrassing regime." These words, directed to the high
military command, basically amount to a call to overthrow the
government. He continues by referring to the plan as a sequence
of events that all Venezuelans are going to see this December, and in
which their destiny as dignified human beings, and the destiny of
their respectable nation, is at play. Obviously, Poleo is
implying that if Chavez continues in power, Venezuela will cease
to be a dignified and respectable nation, and that Venezuelans
should not have to continue putting up with him. He forgets
to mention, however, that surveys show Chavez has the support of
the majority of Venezuelans.
command coincides with a similar call made by candidate Manuel
Rosales one day before. At a political rally, Rosales made
a call for a meeting with the high military command, "because
we have to be preparing for a transition and change of government
that will come to Venezuela in the near future," he said.
Rosales has yet to make the claim that the elections are fraudulent,
but he did call on the government to get rid of the "captahuella"
machines, which he had previously accepted as a condition of the
election. Rosales maintains that he will win at the ballot
box, although nearly all the polls show him to be trailing Chavez
by a large margin.
If it weren't for the 2002 coup attempt,
which occurred in a strikingly similar fashion, these words from
the opposition might not be as significant. But the 2002 coup
also began with large opposition protests against the government.
When violence broke out between pro and anti-government groups,
snipers and the Metropolitan police opened fire on innocent protesters
both from the Chavez camp and from the opposition. Next,
blaming the violence on the government, military officers
aligned with the opposition forced the president to leave office
under the threat that the Presidential Palace would be bombed.
Just as they appear to be doing now, the private media set the stage
for the coup after they made numerous calls for the people to come
out and march against Chavez. Later, with the intervention of
a group within the military they were almost successful in
overthrowing the government. Popular demonstrations forced
them to hand power back over Chavez, but the radical opposition
groups didn't go away, and they have continued their attempts to
destabilize the country in the years since.
On December
4th, it is almost certain that there will be large opposition protests
in the major cities of Venezuela. Since the private media
continues to report false surveys that show a possible victory
for the opposition, a large sector of the population now believes
that Rosales may hold the lead. When Chavez beats him at
ballot box, which is the obvious result according to most polls,
it will be a hard reality to accept for all those Venezuelans who
have been decieved by their major media's manipulation.
Rosales and the opposition leaders have called out to the people,
and to the military command. There will no doubt be protests
in the days following the elections, but will there be a coup?
Original source / relevant link:
Gringo in Venezuela
 | ||
| Top of page |  |
| ||
|
Fair use notice of copyrighted
material:
This site contains some copyrighted material that in some cases
has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are
making such material available in our efforts to advance the understanding
of politics, human rights, the economy, democracy, and social justice
issues related to Venezuela. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use'
of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the
US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the
material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for
research and educational purposes. For more information go to: www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml.
If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes
of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from
the copyright owner.
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Women of Beit Hanoun - Where's the International Community?
Israhell at it again, brought to you by your friendly neighborhood US tax payer. How much more of this will the American people tolerate?
Israhell at it again, brought to you by your friendly neighborhood US tax payer. How much more of this will the American people tolerate?
Allen's Listening Tour
The voters in Virginia and around the US have sent the likes of Allen packing. The Democrats represent the hopes of many good people, but their history shows that they have not come through for their base in decades.If they are real they will make it impossible for George Bush to continue his Iraq and Afghanistan wars. If they are real they will kill any plan to attack Iran. If they are real they will reign in Israel.The Democrats will cool the anti Venezuela rhetoric if they are sincere.
If the Deomcrats are real they will produce a single payer national health insurance plan that works and is affordable. If the Democrats are real they will investigate the stealing of the last two presidential elections. They will raise the minimum wage substantially. Otherwise they will once gain be betraying the people who look to them for positive change and results.
The voters in Virginia and around the US have sent the likes of Allen packing. The Democrats represent the hopes of many good people, but their history shows that they have not come through for their base in decades.If they are real they will make it impossible for George Bush to continue his Iraq and Afghanistan wars. If they are real they will kill any plan to attack Iran. If they are real they will reign in Israel.The Democrats will cool the anti Venezuela rhetoric if they are sincere.
If the Deomcrats are real they will produce a single payer national health insurance plan that works and is affordable. If the Democrats are real they will investigate the stealing of the last two presidential elections. They will raise the minimum wage substantially. Otherwise they will once gain be betraying the people who look to them for positive change and results.
Enter Adolph Lieberman Written by Khalid Amayreh
http://www.ziopedia.org/content/view/2033/0/
Thursday, 26 October 2006
[Editor's note: To put a racist pig like Avigdor Lieberman on the same level as David Duke is quite an insult to the latter. But I guess the term 'Nazi' has undergone the same change of meaning as the term 'anti-Semite': in the olden days it was someone who hated Jews, these days it's someone the Jews hate.]
Al-Khalil - Have you ever wondered why almost everybody in Israel and north America is silent about the imminent inclusion of the Nazi-like figure of Avigdor Lieberman into the Israeli government of Ehud Olmert?
Just imagine how Jews and their supporters and apologists would react if George W. Bush were to include to into his cabinet figures such as David Duke or Lewis Farrakhan.
Well, we all remember how Zionist circles around the world reacted rabidly to the brief inclusion of Jorge Haider’s Freedom Party into the Austrian government in 2000. Then Jewish and Zionist circles from Sydney to California waged a virulent campaign of vilification against everything Austrian to the extent that neutral and peaceable European country was made to look as if it were a modern-day reincarnation of the Third Reich.
Now, in Israel, we have the rising star of a Judeo-Nazi figure, a vile Moldovan, a little Stalin that combines characteristic Zionist racism with Stalinist brutality, who is about to join the government of Israel, the so-called only “true democracy in the Middle East.”
For those who still don’t know Lieberman, a thuggish figure by every shred of imagination, we are talking about the head of the fourth largest political party in Israel, Yisrael Beitenu, or Israel is our Home.
Lieberman is more than just “controversial” as the Jewish and Jewish-controlled media would portray him, mainly in order to evade facing the reality of his fascist-mindset.
He is actually a dangerous demagogic politician and warmonger who advocates ethnic cleansing, genocide and nuclear wars. In fact, the man can be viewed as a Hitler-in-the-making with very little exaggeration.
Lieberman’s thuggish behavior is very well known even among Jews in Israel. In 1999, the former Moldovan immigrant attacked and savagely beat, some say bit, a neighbor’s child for allegedly beating his own son.
The affair was publicized in Israel but eventually died down when Lieberman’s star rose, first as a lawmaker representing Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union and second as cabinet minister in Ariel Sharon’s government 2001-2003.
As a cabinet minister Lieberman espoused Nazi-like ideas so brazenly that then Foreign Minister Shimon Peres had to warn him that he might be summoned to The Hague to stand trial for crimes against humanity if he decided to turn his racist ideology into effect.
On 8 March, 2002, the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot quoted him as saying the following during a cabinet meeting:
“At eight o’clock, we bomb all commercial centers, at 12 o’clock we bomb all fuel stations, and at two o’clock in the afternoon, we bomb all the banks, and we keep the border crossings open.”
More to the point, Lieberman’s election platform spoke of disenfranchising non-Jews in Israel, expelling Palestinians from the Galilee, and ethnically cleansing Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza by way of expanding Jewish settlements and confining Palestinians to Bantustans and townships as was the case in apartheid South Africa.
Lieberman also suggested on several occasions that Israel bomb Tehran as well as the Aswan Dam in Egypt.
Now this Lieberman is apparently slated to become Israel’s deputy-prime minister and, more significantly, Minister for handling Strategic Threats facing Israel.
Well, would that include giving him at least a partial authority over Israel’s estimated 300-400 nuclear bombs and missiles? Everything is possible in this strange state that is yet to wake up from a nearly congenital collective psychosis that makes her murder children on their way to school and drop 1.5 million cluster bombs in Lebanon, all under the rubric of ensuring security.
It is true that Lieberman is not the only Nazi-like political figure in Israel’s long criminal history. After all, it is really difficult to locate an Israeli leader whose hands are not stained with the blood of Arab civilians and whose mind is not infested with criminal racism. Indeed, murder, terror and racism are as Israeli and Zionist as apple pie is American and boomerangs are Australian.
Nonetheless, Lieberman can be especially dangerous because his Zio-Nazi ideology is given democratic legitimacy. Well, do we have to remind ourselves that Adolph Hitler was also elected by the people in a free and fair election?
Indeed, Lieberman, whose party controls 11 seats of the 120-seats making up the Israeli Knesset, draws support from wide sectors of the Israeli Jewish public beyond his immediate constituency which more or less support his fascist ideas about disenfranchising and even expelling non-Jewish citizens of Israel who make up nearly one forth of the population.
Hence, it is misleading to dismiss this man and his manifestly racist party as a marginal phenomenon in Israel. In fact, one would exaggerate little by saying that Lieberman effectively reflects and represents the feelings of a majority of Jews in Israel. Yes, maybe other politicians, like Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and opposition leader Benyamin Netanyahu, who boasted repeatedly about having succeeded in reducing the Israeli Arab birth rate, don’t speak as brazenly as he does, especially in public. However, it is amply clear that most of these politicians and leaders from the Zionist and religious-Zionist camps as well as the so-called center-left more or less hold the same ideas held by Lieberman, as evidenced from the policies and practices of successive Israeli governments throughout the years.
And now a few words to the Europeans.
It is really difficult to understand, let alone justify, European silence on the inclusion of this Nazi-like figure into the Israeli government.
Doesn’t Europe, which wasted no time in imposing draconian sanctions on the Palestinian people for electing Hamas, realize that this man is a million light years more extremist and more racist than anything advocated by Hamas?
How could Europe continue to have business as usual with a government one of whose ministers calls openly for disenfranchising and de-legitimizing nearly one forth of the population on no other ground than them being adherents of different religions?
Or is Europe emulating the American administration of George Bush by walking in the path of hypocrisy and moral duplicity and playing blind, deaf and dumb when Israel displays her own fascism before the whole world?
Europe should remember that fascism doesn’t become benign when espoused by Jews.
Source: Palestine-info.co.uk
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
A few comments---
I agree with the author about fascism.
Lieberman is about the most frightening Judeo Nazi there is. That he's now a ranking government leader of Israhell makes him a million times more dangerous than David Duke is or ever was. David Duke is a white supremacist, one who believes that whites, as he defines them, are a superior race, just as Judeonazis believe that Jews, as they define them, are superior, or chosen by God. Duke is also a racial hater of all Jewish people who during the trial of leaders of the anti Vietnam War movement who were Jewish and Black called the Chicago Eight (or Seven Plus One) trial he paraded himself in a Nazi uniform holding up a sign calling for these Vietnam war opponents to be "gassed." If Duke ever had publicly renounced or regretted this it would be tiresome to bring it up but he never has, only to express that perhaps the Nazi uniform was not the way to the hearts and minds of the American people. The lesson he learned was to tone down his rhetoric and get his face changed surgically to reemerge in a business suit. In fact he was blown up to superman size by the same Zionist media he claims to decry while he continues to reprint Zionist New York Daily News lying slanders against the disposessed (like the Palestinian people) Black people of New Orleans.
Both are Lieberman and Duke are viscious racists. Duke has no authority over atomic bombs, soldiers or air forces. (Thank God for that too.) Lieberman has this power now.
I do not agree with the author that Duke is not a racist pig. He is. He just can't do much about it. Unfortunately there is a curent within the movement against Zionism that seeks not only to rehabilitate Duke, who they regard as an ally, but to rehabilitate racism itself. It saddens me to see people I have respected walk that path. Just goes to show I don't always have the best foresight or judgement. It's best though not to marry one's mistakes. When Israel Shamir tried to tie me to this trend in an article that appeared in rense.com I made it clear on his newsgroup that I am not a part of this trend. Shamir now says that supremacism is irrelevant and that anti-racism is a Jewish construct. Perhaps he'll consider changing the heading on his own web site.
Thursday, 26 October 2006
[Editor's note: To put a racist pig like Avigdor Lieberman on the same level as David Duke is quite an insult to the latter. But I guess the term 'Nazi' has undergone the same change of meaning as the term 'anti-Semite': in the olden days it was someone who hated Jews, these days it's someone the Jews hate.]
Al-Khalil - Have you ever wondered why almost everybody in Israel and north America is silent about the imminent inclusion of the Nazi-like figure of Avigdor Lieberman into the Israeli government of Ehud Olmert?
Just imagine how Jews and their supporters and apologists would react if George W. Bush were to include to into his cabinet figures such as David Duke or Lewis Farrakhan.
Well, we all remember how Zionist circles around the world reacted rabidly to the brief inclusion of Jorge Haider’s Freedom Party into the Austrian government in 2000. Then Jewish and Zionist circles from Sydney to California waged a virulent campaign of vilification against everything Austrian to the extent that neutral and peaceable European country was made to look as if it were a modern-day reincarnation of the Third Reich.
Now, in Israel, we have the rising star of a Judeo-Nazi figure, a vile Moldovan, a little Stalin that combines characteristic Zionist racism with Stalinist brutality, who is about to join the government of Israel, the so-called only “true democracy in the Middle East.”
For those who still don’t know Lieberman, a thuggish figure by every shred of imagination, we are talking about the head of the fourth largest political party in Israel, Yisrael Beitenu, or Israel is our Home.
Lieberman is more than just “controversial” as the Jewish and Jewish-controlled media would portray him, mainly in order to evade facing the reality of his fascist-mindset.
He is actually a dangerous demagogic politician and warmonger who advocates ethnic cleansing, genocide and nuclear wars. In fact, the man can be viewed as a Hitler-in-the-making with very little exaggeration.
Lieberman’s thuggish behavior is very well known even among Jews in Israel. In 1999, the former Moldovan immigrant attacked and savagely beat, some say bit, a neighbor’s child for allegedly beating his own son.
The affair was publicized in Israel but eventually died down when Lieberman’s star rose, first as a lawmaker representing Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union and second as cabinet minister in Ariel Sharon’s government 2001-2003.
As a cabinet minister Lieberman espoused Nazi-like ideas so brazenly that then Foreign Minister Shimon Peres had to warn him that he might be summoned to The Hague to stand trial for crimes against humanity if he decided to turn his racist ideology into effect.
On 8 March, 2002, the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot quoted him as saying the following during a cabinet meeting:
“At eight o’clock, we bomb all commercial centers, at 12 o’clock we bomb all fuel stations, and at two o’clock in the afternoon, we bomb all the banks, and we keep the border crossings open.”
More to the point, Lieberman’s election platform spoke of disenfranchising non-Jews in Israel, expelling Palestinians from the Galilee, and ethnically cleansing Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza by way of expanding Jewish settlements and confining Palestinians to Bantustans and townships as was the case in apartheid South Africa.
Lieberman also suggested on several occasions that Israel bomb Tehran as well as the Aswan Dam in Egypt.
Now this Lieberman is apparently slated to become Israel’s deputy-prime minister and, more significantly, Minister for handling Strategic Threats facing Israel.
Well, would that include giving him at least a partial authority over Israel’s estimated 300-400 nuclear bombs and missiles? Everything is possible in this strange state that is yet to wake up from a nearly congenital collective psychosis that makes her murder children on their way to school and drop 1.5 million cluster bombs in Lebanon, all under the rubric of ensuring security.
It is true that Lieberman is not the only Nazi-like political figure in Israel’s long criminal history. After all, it is really difficult to locate an Israeli leader whose hands are not stained with the blood of Arab civilians and whose mind is not infested with criminal racism. Indeed, murder, terror and racism are as Israeli and Zionist as apple pie is American and boomerangs are Australian.
Nonetheless, Lieberman can be especially dangerous because his Zio-Nazi ideology is given democratic legitimacy. Well, do we have to remind ourselves that Adolph Hitler was also elected by the people in a free and fair election?
Indeed, Lieberman, whose party controls 11 seats of the 120-seats making up the Israeli Knesset, draws support from wide sectors of the Israeli Jewish public beyond his immediate constituency which more or less support his fascist ideas about disenfranchising and even expelling non-Jewish citizens of Israel who make up nearly one forth of the population.
Hence, it is misleading to dismiss this man and his manifestly racist party as a marginal phenomenon in Israel. In fact, one would exaggerate little by saying that Lieberman effectively reflects and represents the feelings of a majority of Jews in Israel. Yes, maybe other politicians, like Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and opposition leader Benyamin Netanyahu, who boasted repeatedly about having succeeded in reducing the Israeli Arab birth rate, don’t speak as brazenly as he does, especially in public. However, it is amply clear that most of these politicians and leaders from the Zionist and religious-Zionist camps as well as the so-called center-left more or less hold the same ideas held by Lieberman, as evidenced from the policies and practices of successive Israeli governments throughout the years.
And now a few words to the Europeans.
It is really difficult to understand, let alone justify, European silence on the inclusion of this Nazi-like figure into the Israeli government.
Doesn’t Europe, which wasted no time in imposing draconian sanctions on the Palestinian people for electing Hamas, realize that this man is a million light years more extremist and more racist than anything advocated by Hamas?
How could Europe continue to have business as usual with a government one of whose ministers calls openly for disenfranchising and de-legitimizing nearly one forth of the population on no other ground than them being adherents of different religions?
Or is Europe emulating the American administration of George Bush by walking in the path of hypocrisy and moral duplicity and playing blind, deaf and dumb when Israel displays her own fascism before the whole world?
Europe should remember that fascism doesn’t become benign when espoused by Jews.
Source: Palestine-info.co.uk
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
A few comments---
I agree with the author about fascism.
Lieberman is about the most frightening Judeo Nazi there is. That he's now a ranking government leader of Israhell makes him a million times more dangerous than David Duke is or ever was. David Duke is a white supremacist, one who believes that whites, as he defines them, are a superior race, just as Judeonazis believe that Jews, as they define them, are superior, or chosen by God. Duke is also a racial hater of all Jewish people who during the trial of leaders of the anti Vietnam War movement who were Jewish and Black called the Chicago Eight (or Seven Plus One) trial he paraded himself in a Nazi uniform holding up a sign calling for these Vietnam war opponents to be "gassed." If Duke ever had publicly renounced or regretted this it would be tiresome to bring it up but he never has, only to express that perhaps the Nazi uniform was not the way to the hearts and minds of the American people. The lesson he learned was to tone down his rhetoric and get his face changed surgically to reemerge in a business suit. In fact he was blown up to superman size by the same Zionist media he claims to decry while he continues to reprint Zionist New York Daily News lying slanders against the disposessed (like the Palestinian people) Black people of New Orleans.
Both are Lieberman and Duke are viscious racists. Duke has no authority over atomic bombs, soldiers or air forces. (Thank God for that too.) Lieberman has this power now.
I do not agree with the author that Duke is not a racist pig. He is. He just can't do much about it. Unfortunately there is a curent within the movement against Zionism that seeks not only to rehabilitate Duke, who they regard as an ally, but to rehabilitate racism itself. It saddens me to see people I have respected walk that path. Just goes to show I don't always have the best foresight or judgement. It's best though not to marry one's mistakes. When Israel Shamir tried to tie me to this trend in an article that appeared in rense.com I made it clear on his newsgroup that I am not a part of this trend. Shamir now says that supremacism is irrelevant and that anti-racism is a Jewish construct. Perhaps he'll consider changing the heading on his own web site.
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Israel, Get Out Of My World!
I had previously posted an article (reposted below) that briefly
stated some of the reasons why I do not want, and feel I have no
legitimate right to, a "right to return" to the land called Israel,
although my mother was Jewish, (so am I) and therefore a law exists
guaranteeing me this "right" and this "right" is financed by my
friends, neighbors and co workers, aka "The American People.". I
got a lot of responses to that article when it first appeared. In
light of the ongoing mass murders by Israhell of Palestinians and
Lebanese people, I need not only to restate this renunciation of
what amounts to dual citizenship in some official kind of way, and
also to try to get other Jewish people who see things from a similar
point of view to my own to do the same thing.
I am a citizen of the United States of America because I was born
here, in Brooklyn New York to be exact. This turns out to be a much
coveted priviledge, something people travel half a world to try to get,
and even more, people leave their homes with little or no hope of obtaining
this priviledge I was born into, but only a hope to do work for less money
than American citizens will accept. I am not ready to renounce or allow
anyone to place this citizenship of mine in doubt. I am not
an Israeli.
This renunciation thing is going to be a project, like my
campaign against Administration for Children's Services. Any
advice or assistance will be
appreciated.
I want to make something clear. I live in New York. I am from New
York. I do not have a right and do not want a right to "return" to Israel.
I never was there. I want to skip all the arguments about whether or not
today's Jews descend from the people of the Old Testament. I don't care
if I do or I don't. It doesn't matter nor should it.
The
territory that is known to many as Palestine had been peopled by Arabic
speaking folks for centuries, mainly they were Muslims, many were Christians,
and a few of them Jewish too. Most of those people were kicked out of their
lands and homes in 1948 by people like David Ben Gurion and Ariel Sharon
and more were expelled in 1967. They are the ones who have a right to
return, not me.
Actually there is a place I want to return to.
The New York of my youth. That was a place where the schools were the best.
Where a first class education to the university level was there for free,
with extra money for the most gifted. It was a place where a widow working
as a sales clerk could pay the rent for an apartment for her kid and herself,
not a room in someone else's place.
The place I want to go back
to was called a "Union Town." There were factories and warehouses and
eleven or twelve newspapers that hired typesetters, proofreaders, truck
drivers and more, people who could on their wages, pay a going rent.
Y
es, let the Palestinians return to their homes, and let me return to mine.
Links about Israel and Palestine:
On the Fiftieth Anniversary
of Deir Yassin—
A View from the Arab World By Rami G. Khouri
Lenni Brenner
Zionism in the Age of the Dictators
7. Hitler Looks at Zionism
This item may be reporoduced
only in its entirety with credit to this website Fat Old Jewish Guy Who
Lives In the Projects
Eugene Weixel
stated some of the reasons why I do not want, and feel I have no
legitimate right to, a "right to return" to the land called Israel,
although my mother was Jewish, (so am I) and therefore a law exists
guaranteeing me this "right" and this "right" is financed by my
friends, neighbors and co workers, aka "The American People.". I
got a lot of responses to that article when it first appeared. In
light of the ongoing mass murders by Israhell of Palestinians and
Lebanese people, I need not only to restate this renunciation of
what amounts to dual citizenship in some official kind of way, and
also to try to get other Jewish people who see things from a similar
point of view to my own to do the same thing.
I am a citizen of the United States of America because I was born
here, in Brooklyn New York to be exact. This turns out to be a much
coveted priviledge, something people travel half a world to try to get,
and even more, people leave their homes with little or no hope of obtaining
this priviledge I was born into, but only a hope to do work for less money
than American citizens will accept. I am not ready to renounce or allow
anyone to place this citizenship of mine in doubt. I am not
an Israeli.
This renunciation thing is going to be a project, like my
campaign against Administration for Children's Services. Any
advice or assistance will be
appreciated.
I want to make something clear. I live in New York. I am from New
York. I do not have a right and do not want a right to "return" to Israel.
I never was there. I want to skip all the arguments about whether or not
today's Jews descend from the people of the Old Testament. I don't care
if I do or I don't. It doesn't matter nor should it.
The
territory that is known to many as Palestine had been peopled by Arabic
speaking folks for centuries, mainly they were Muslims, many were Christians,
and a few of them Jewish too. Most of those people were kicked out of their
lands and homes in 1948 by people like David Ben Gurion and Ariel Sharon
and more were expelled in 1967. They are the ones who have a right to
return, not me.
Actually there is a place I want to return to.
The New York of my youth. That was a place where the schools were the best.
Where a first class education to the university level was there for free,
with extra money for the most gifted. It was a place where a widow working
as a sales clerk could pay the rent for an apartment for her kid and herself,
not a room in someone else's place.
The place I want to go back
to was called a "Union Town." There were factories and warehouses and
eleven or twelve newspapers that hired typesetters, proofreaders, truck
drivers and more, people who could on their wages, pay a going rent.
Y
es, let the Palestinians return to their homes, and let me return to mine.
Links about Israel and Palestine:
On the Fiftieth Anniversary
of Deir Yassin—
A View from the Arab World By Rami G. Khouri
Lenni Brenner
Zionism in the Age of the Dictators
7. Hitler Looks at Zionism
This item may be reporoduced
only in its entirety with credit to this website Fat Old Jewish Guy Who
Lives In the Projects
Eugene Weixel
Monday, November 06, 2006
Democrats Investigate Venezuelan Ties, But Are Inconsistent on Voter Technology
Print format
Send by email
By: Nikolas Kozloff
I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me.
A few days ago, I read an article in the New York Times about how Representative Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat from the Upper East Side of Manhattan, had successfully lobbied the U.S. government into investigating Smartmatic. The company owns Sequoia Voting Systems, one of the nation’s largest manufacturers of electronic voting machines. Sequoia's voting equipment will be used in the November 7, 2006 Congressional elections in 16 U.S. states as well as the District of Columbia.
The U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) a multi-agency panel that approves or rejects foreign takeovers, will handle the investigation.
Could it be, I wondered, that after six long years of Republican rule and electoral shenanigans, the Democrats had finally found their nerve and were going to fight to preserve our electoral democracy?
Then I read the fine print: what really upset Maloney was that Smartmatic might have ties to leftist Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and his government.
Demonizing Chavez has become de riguer ever since the Venezuelan leader called Bush “the devil” while addressing the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Chavez was prompted to go on his rhetorical offensive after enduring years of strong-arm U.S. interventionist tactics in his nation’s internal politics (for a more detailed explanation of these issues see my recent book, Hugo Chavez: Oil, Politics, and the Challenge to the U.S., published by St. Martin’s Press).
According to the Miami Herald, Maloney expressed concerns regarding Smartmatic’s purchase of Sequoia last year and a possible connection between the Venezuelan government and Smartmatic through the software company, Bizta- which is operated by two of the same people who own Smartmatic.
At one time, the Venezuelan government owned 28% of Bitza. But, Sequoia claims this part “ownership” in Bizta merely added up to collateral for a $150,000 loan that Bizta had received in 2003 from the Venezuelan Industrial Credit Fund, which is the equivalent of the U.S. Small Business Administration.
Smartmatic is owned by three Venezuelans; they are being investigated by the Feds in an effort to ascertain whether Caracas has any control or influence over Smartmatic. Company officials strenuously deny any link, as does the Venezuelan government.
By calling for an investigation, Maloney gets to look tough on the issue of voter technology. "The government should know who owns our voting machines -- that is a national security concern," she remarked. "Having a foreign government investing or owning a company in this country that makes voting machines could raise a question about the integrity of the elections," she added.
Maloney, who voted for the Iraq war in 2002 but who now seeks to redeploy the troops “at the earliest practicable date,” specializes in fishing for safe issues that make her look strong on national security. She recently sought to outflank the Bush administration by calling for reform of the CFIUS process that allowed Dubai Ports World to acquire a British company that controlled operations in several key U.S. ports.
Now Maloney seeks to enhance her standing on national security matters by suggesting that the Bush administration is failing to protect us from the likes of the Venezuelan government.
“Just as the Dubai ports deal was a priority security issue,” she remarked, “any potential foreign influence on our elections system is vital to our national security and deserves at least a look. It doesn’t seem that the deal for Sequoia was vetted by our government, and I want to know why.”
By raising the red flag on Venezuela Maloney gets into the good graces of the mainstream media, which has been condemning Chavez ever since his inflammatory appearance at the United Nations.
CNN’s Lou Dobbs, a nationalist xenophobe, has long been a leading Chavez critic. Not surprisingly he lavished praise on Maloney, remarking on his show that “we have to give just extraordinary credit to Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney. She focused on this issue, she brought it to the attention of the public, and our hats are off to her.”
As the ranking member on the Domestic and International Monetary Policy, Trade and Technology Subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over CFIUS, Maloney has the right to call for investigations as she sees fit. The problem, however, is that the Democrats have not been consistent on the issue of voter technology.
Sequoia is actually the smallest of the three top vendors of e-voting machinery; the others are Diebold, Election Systems & Software (ES&S), and Hart InterCivic.
According to Robert Kennedy Jr., writing in Rolling Stone magazine, ES&S was at one point chaired by Chuck Hagel, a Republican Senator from Nebraska.
Tom Hicks, an investor in Hart InterCivic and a GOP stalwart, bought the Texas Rangers from George Bush in 1998. The purchase made George Bush a millionaire.
Diebold has contributed at least $300,000 to GOP candidates since 1998. Up until recently, Walden O’Dell was Diebold’s CEO; prior to the presidential election of 2004 he pledged to deliver Ohio to George Bush.
In Ohio in 2004, observers reported widespread problems and irregularities with ES&S machines. Following the election in Ohio, Democratic Congressman John Conyers of Michigan wrote a report about flawed computer voter technology and raised the issue on the floor of Congress, but received little support from Democrats in the Senate.
The Nation’s John Nichols remarked, “the dramatic imperfections in the 2004 presidential election in Ohio, as detailed in a new report…circulated by Representative John Conyers Jr…. deserve a more serious response than they received from the majority of Congressional Democrats.”
When Congress reviewed the Electoral College result, Conyers objected to the certification of the Ohio result. But in the end, only 31 Democratic House members and one Senator voted against electoral certification.
Going into the November 7th election, voters are uneasy about the security of touch-screen voting machines and other electronic elections systems. According to officials, nearly 40 percent of voters on Election Day next week will be using paperless touch-screen machines which leave no paper trail and are vulnerable to hackers. According to Newsweek magazine, Diebold machines display grave vulnerabilities. Experts say that the software on Diebold machines can be altered very easily. Diebold, unlike Smartmatic, is not owned by Venezuelans but Americans.
The Democrats must systematically address the issue of electronic voting machines and companies across the board. Failure to do so will give the distinct impression that the party is trying to score easy political points by bashing Chavez and lacks the necessary commitment to preserve our electoral democracy.Nikolas Kozloff is the author, most recently, of Hugo Chavez: Oil, Politics, and the Challenge to the U.S. (St. Martin’s Press)
Top of page
Fair use notice of copyrighted material:This site contains some copyrighted material that in some cases has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance the understanding of politics, human rights, the economy, democracy, and social justice issues related to Venezuela. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Send by email
By: Nikolas Kozloff
I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me.
A few days ago, I read an article in the New York Times about how Representative Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat from the Upper East Side of Manhattan, had successfully lobbied the U.S. government into investigating Smartmatic. The company owns Sequoia Voting Systems, one of the nation’s largest manufacturers of electronic voting machines. Sequoia's voting equipment will be used in the November 7, 2006 Congressional elections in 16 U.S. states as well as the District of Columbia.
The U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) a multi-agency panel that approves or rejects foreign takeovers, will handle the investigation.
Could it be, I wondered, that after six long years of Republican rule and electoral shenanigans, the Democrats had finally found their nerve and were going to fight to preserve our electoral democracy?
Then I read the fine print: what really upset Maloney was that Smartmatic might have ties to leftist Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and his government.
Demonizing Chavez has become de riguer ever since the Venezuelan leader called Bush “the devil” while addressing the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Chavez was prompted to go on his rhetorical offensive after enduring years of strong-arm U.S. interventionist tactics in his nation’s internal politics (for a more detailed explanation of these issues see my recent book, Hugo Chavez: Oil, Politics, and the Challenge to the U.S., published by St. Martin’s Press).
According to the Miami Herald, Maloney expressed concerns regarding Smartmatic’s purchase of Sequoia last year and a possible connection between the Venezuelan government and Smartmatic through the software company, Bizta- which is operated by two of the same people who own Smartmatic.
At one time, the Venezuelan government owned 28% of Bitza. But, Sequoia claims this part “ownership” in Bizta merely added up to collateral for a $150,000 loan that Bizta had received in 2003 from the Venezuelan Industrial Credit Fund, which is the equivalent of the U.S. Small Business Administration.
Smartmatic is owned by three Venezuelans; they are being investigated by the Feds in an effort to ascertain whether Caracas has any control or influence over Smartmatic. Company officials strenuously deny any link, as does the Venezuelan government.
By calling for an investigation, Maloney gets to look tough on the issue of voter technology. "The government should know who owns our voting machines -- that is a national security concern," she remarked. "Having a foreign government investing or owning a company in this country that makes voting machines could raise a question about the integrity of the elections," she added.
Maloney, who voted for the Iraq war in 2002 but who now seeks to redeploy the troops “at the earliest practicable date,” specializes in fishing for safe issues that make her look strong on national security. She recently sought to outflank the Bush administration by calling for reform of the CFIUS process that allowed Dubai Ports World to acquire a British company that controlled operations in several key U.S. ports.
Now Maloney seeks to enhance her standing on national security matters by suggesting that the Bush administration is failing to protect us from the likes of the Venezuelan government.
“Just as the Dubai ports deal was a priority security issue,” she remarked, “any potential foreign influence on our elections system is vital to our national security and deserves at least a look. It doesn’t seem that the deal for Sequoia was vetted by our government, and I want to know why.”
By raising the red flag on Venezuela Maloney gets into the good graces of the mainstream media, which has been condemning Chavez ever since his inflammatory appearance at the United Nations.
CNN’s Lou Dobbs, a nationalist xenophobe, has long been a leading Chavez critic. Not surprisingly he lavished praise on Maloney, remarking on his show that “we have to give just extraordinary credit to Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney. She focused on this issue, she brought it to the attention of the public, and our hats are off to her.”
As the ranking member on the Domestic and International Monetary Policy, Trade and Technology Subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over CFIUS, Maloney has the right to call for investigations as she sees fit. The problem, however, is that the Democrats have not been consistent on the issue of voter technology.
Sequoia is actually the smallest of the three top vendors of e-voting machinery; the others are Diebold, Election Systems & Software (ES&S), and Hart InterCivic.
According to Robert Kennedy Jr., writing in Rolling Stone magazine, ES&S was at one point chaired by Chuck Hagel, a Republican Senator from Nebraska.
Tom Hicks, an investor in Hart InterCivic and a GOP stalwart, bought the Texas Rangers from George Bush in 1998. The purchase made George Bush a millionaire.
Diebold has contributed at least $300,000 to GOP candidates since 1998. Up until recently, Walden O’Dell was Diebold’s CEO; prior to the presidential election of 2004 he pledged to deliver Ohio to George Bush.
In Ohio in 2004, observers reported widespread problems and irregularities with ES&S machines. Following the election in Ohio, Democratic Congressman John Conyers of Michigan wrote a report about flawed computer voter technology and raised the issue on the floor of Congress, but received little support from Democrats in the Senate.
The Nation’s John Nichols remarked, “the dramatic imperfections in the 2004 presidential election in Ohio, as detailed in a new report…circulated by Representative John Conyers Jr…. deserve a more serious response than they received from the majority of Congressional Democrats.”
When Congress reviewed the Electoral College result, Conyers objected to the certification of the Ohio result. But in the end, only 31 Democratic House members and one Senator voted against electoral certification.
Going into the November 7th election, voters are uneasy about the security of touch-screen voting machines and other electronic elections systems. According to officials, nearly 40 percent of voters on Election Day next week will be using paperless touch-screen machines which leave no paper trail and are vulnerable to hackers. According to Newsweek magazine, Diebold machines display grave vulnerabilities. Experts say that the software on Diebold machines can be altered very easily. Diebold, unlike Smartmatic, is not owned by Venezuelans but Americans.
The Democrats must systematically address the issue of electronic voting machines and companies across the board. Failure to do so will give the distinct impression that the party is trying to score easy political points by bashing Chavez and lacks the necessary commitment to preserve our electoral democracy.Nikolas Kozloff is the author, most recently, of Hugo Chavez: Oil, Politics, and the Challenge to the U.S. (St. Martin’s Press)
Top of page
Fair use notice of copyrighted material:This site contains some copyrighted material that in some cases has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance the understanding of politics, human rights, the economy, democracy, and social justice issues related to Venezuela. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Probably the final posting regarding the Commie Curmudgeon.
Richard S, aka Commie Curmudgeon sent me what is most likely his final missive. Richard and his ideas represent much of what is wrong in the American and Western left or so-called left. I answer him briefly, my comments in red, his in black.
Richard S. said...
Hi, Eugene. I tried to answer this one time and pressed the wrong button or something and my message disappeared. I think, maybe, that's a signal that I should not spend a whole lot more time on this debate. I have no desire to engage in a "flame war."
I don't want to spend more time on a war of words with you either. I've had troble with blogger too, especially in using the comments section.
Regarding a few points:Re. the Hungarian Revolution: Imperialists would like to claim that this was a revolution to support their ideas, but from what I've read and heard, the most significant event in this revolution was the establishment of democratic workers' councils. That was a step toward a more genuine socialism (and an idea/process that we have seen pursued throughout history in attempts to advance toward real socialism).
Well, please find me one veteran of the Hungarian counter revolution who will back up your argument. Let me remind you that workers, or more correctly some people who earn most of their incomes by working for others, have conflicting interests and individuals and groups of workers can have interests that conflict with those of the world working class or proletariat (proletarians being those who have nothing to lose save their chains, a description that doesn't seem to fit with lots of wage and salary earners in the corrupt imperialist countries.) It was certainly tough being a Hungarian worker in 1956. The West was engaging in economic warfare against the Eastern (less developed and war devastated)bloc, and the USSR was still getting reparations from Hungary which if you recall, was an Axis nation that had participated in the despoiling of the USSR and massacres of its people. It certainly would have been attractive to many of these workers to break out of the Soviet orbit and perhaps get an oportunity to "come in from the cold." And no doubt Soviet troops under among other influences that of Ilya Ehrenberg had brutalized the ordinary Hungarian masses and left more than a small amount of anger resentment and hatred. Stalin also used many Jewish people as his hands, eyes and ears in Hungary and the other Central European nations, even after he had chased most Jews out of positions of influence in the USSR itself. Perhaps this is why some Hungarian Jews were lynched in refugee camps.(?)
In Venezuela, many workers in the oil industry participated in the "strike" against the Chavez elected populist government and they formed councils and committees to organize themselves (in alliance of course with their bosses and with the US of A. Around 19,000 of these were fired and are a bunch of very angry puppies today. I can also tell you that from what my wife tells me there are those people who do support Chavez more or less but who are still fearful of a full on confrontation with the US, people who would surely hope it doesn't happen and who still do believe a lot of negative things they have been told over the years about Cuba. There are wage earners, especially those of higher pay grades who really are depositories of human capital, who side with the opposition and who oppose egalitarian measures that lessen their own relative superiority in economic competition, like the near total elimination of illiteracy, availablity of greater levels of education for those children whose parents who cannot afford private schools, etc.
Re. the comment that by saying that if I would not have rooted for the U.S.S.R. between 1921 and 1990, I have something in common with Adolf Hitler(?)... That is a bit silly. Perhaps we had no choice but to "root for" the Russians, among the other allies, during a couple of years of WWII. However, I would never entertain the idea that if we did not support the USSR in general, throughout history, it would be legitimate to remark that we had something in common with Hitler.
Right, "we had no choice" and the USSR did not have to be perfect.
I mentioned 1921 because that was the time of the brutal suppression of the Kronstadt anarchist rebellion in the Ukraine. A lot of people see that as a turning point. Trotskyists may draw the line at the ascension of Stalin, which didn't come long after. Either way, the Russian Revolution, which did hold promise initially, was ultimately betrayed, and failed to achieve anything close real socialism. In fact, the USSR acted to suppress attempts to achieve real socialism - especially the aspect known as workers' democracy - a number of times throughout history. What we got in the USSR, in "Red China," etc., was state capitalism. (If you don't know what that means, I can send a few links or something. It's a fairly common observation these days - initially espoused by left communists and some social democrats, and eventually agreed upon by some Trotskyist groups as well.) Maybe these states formed a useful rival to the capitalist powers of the West. But I don't think I could ever had "rooted for" them. I could only root for attempts to achieve something better, which we have seen throughout modern history, which usually were brutally suppressed by outside forces, be they capitalist or state capitalist. But no time to go much more into the big historical analysis right now.
If "state capitalism" is the name of the system that did away with illiteracy and built an enviable education system for a nation of illiterate peasants and poor workers, that created written languages for peoples who had had no alphabets, if it was "state capitalism" that held the US in some form of check for forty years after having defeated Nazism, if it was "state capitalism" that held off the onslaught against Cuba, well then it isn't all so bad. If that's the best system that could come out of Russia with all its internal contradictions, poverty, external pressures, well then, that system needed to be defended, which is not the same thing as never criticizing (constructively) or the same thing opposing genuine revolutionaries who would have tried to make it better without destroying the gains that had been made, (and without selling out to the imperialist camp of blood sucker nations in hopes of gaining entry to it) and as opposed to pushing the country back into the abyss of Third Worldism, and selling it for pennies on the dollar to a small circle of oligarchs, most of whom just happened to be of that small minority ethnic group you feel we should not speak of.
I am utterly baffled by your ideas promoting the idea of a Jewish conspiracy. I might point out that the vast majority of people holding wealth and power in the U.S. and elsewhere have been WASPs. (Additionally, many people who have opposed such power are Jews - as you yourself pointed out in your earlier disagreements with me.) But I have no desire to pursue that argument, because I do not choose to claim that the source of the problem is any ethnicity or race. That kind of thinking says to us that we are guilty because of whichever ethnicity we are born into, regardless of what we do in life, regardless of our material circumstances, etc. I don't follow that line of thinking at all.
Far far out of proportion are the numbers of Jewish "think tankers" Jewish media mavens, Jewish rich and super rich, Jewish politicians and judges, Jews who fought actively and overtly against affirmative action, who brain trusted and hyped the Iraq war and who frame their world view around what they see as "good for the Jews" and for Israel, as opposed to what is good for their own nation, or more ideally what is good for the human race, the oppressed, the proletarians, the discriminated against. To make believe this is not so or to demonize anyone who notices this is wrong headed and insults the intelligence of millions of people who do notice this, do have questions, do not like it and are not racist haters or motivated by any such thing. You might notice that in my blog I have spoken well of many Jews, spoken of the positive side of the Jewish impact; those who opposed the Vietnam war, those who question authority, those who literally went to the wall against the Vietnam war and in solidarity with Black revolutionaries (for good example the Weatherpeople.) You build a straw man in order to attack it, in order to try to run away from a rather large elephant that's in the room.
You say that because I am white, I never would be rounded up indiscriminately by the police? I disagree. In Staten Island, I had a roommate, also white, who was rounded up in police sweeps. I also knew someone else, also white, who was indiscriminately stopped and harassed. The reason was that we lived in a poor neighborhood. There was, of course, a racist motivation in these sweeps because it was a mostly black neighborhood. But sometimes whites were subject to even more suspicion for being in this poor, black neighborhood. If I said "never" that was wrong. I try never to say "never." I think you make my case here. I can also cite a case of a white woman who lived in The South Bronx, who because she came out of a check cashing place with some cash during a police street sweep of black and latino people not only was rounded up but had the cash taken from her, and was charged with having drug money on her and her children were left without her and with no word as to her whereabouts for more than a day. Of course this did not happen at Trump Towers or even in Riverdale or Howard Beach. She was "collateral damage" in an everyday run of the mill assault on the Black community.
Ultimately, the reason for being attacked by the police was being in a poor neighborhood. (Can you say "black?") Because, in the U.S., and in other places subject to the rule of right-wing capitalism, poverty is considered a crime. Look at the incarceration statsitics. Can you say "black?" There may be some legitimacy to the argument that in these high-crime neighborhoods, there has to be more effort put into controlling crime (until we have a different kind of society where we don't need to depend on an authoritarian police force to supposedly keep down crime). But ultimately, the crime for which the greatest number of people are attacked, harassed and punished is the crime of poverty. Not possibly "breathing while black?"
I also don't consider myself immune from police harassment, etc., even in other neighborhoods. I was followed by police and put under surveillance for my participation in anarchist groups during the anti-WEF demonstrations of 2002. Police literally followed me all over town, (You sound a bit like a paranoid conspitracy guy here, but truth is I believe you and really people who deny that kinds of these things happen are only making it easier for the government to do it more do it harder and do it with impunity.) and I have reason to believe they were monitoring me for weeks. (And it's a strong possibility that they still are doing so, and that our conversation is being monitored too. I base that on real experience, not far-fetched ideas about conspiracies.) And what did I do to deserve this attention? I'm still trying to figure that out. I let some members of an anarchist group stay in my house. I helped to organize an anarchist benefit. And I walked with a group of people on a street where the police state declared that a group of people were not allowed to walk. That last item is the only thing that I did that was "illegal." But that's not really relevant. Such are the rewards for being a citizen of this great "free" country called the U.S.A. I think you have to agree that the police surveillance and harrassment you speak of is not the same thing as the ongoing "operation Condor" drug sweeps, stop and frisks, 41 bullet type things the black community has to endure. You made yourself an enemy of the status quo. You showed signs of "racial treason" by being among the first or only whites to live in a given neighborhood and so yes, they respond, don't they?
I don't consider renouncing my "Israeli citizenship" as a major thing on my "to do" list. I admit I'm not doing a lot in general lately, I know and I made a good faith suggestion of something that might matter, but not to worry I can do it without you. but when I do things and write things, I have a lot of stuff on my mind other than whether I should renounce Israeli citizenship. So do I but it does bother me also a lot, because one should not want to be seen as or be in fact any type of Israeli citizen which you and I are as long as the Israhelli governmnent has a place open for you and for me and not for any non Jew in a settlement or immigrant town that belongs to ethnically cleansed Palestinians. I think we are being oppressed more and more through a relentless class war. I feel it personally through a decline in my own prospects and living standards (and I think we all must act at least in part based on our personal experiences and personal struggles), and I see it all around me. I also see "our" government taking greater and greater measures to suppress the public's civil liberties and establish a police state. (And the Democrats aren't much better than the Republicans on that front; in fact, they are working together in many ways.) Of course, all of this is connected, and the alliance between "our" ruling class and that of the State of Israel is certainly not irrelevant. But my hypothetical Israeli "citizenship" (and renouncing same) just isn't the first item on my list or in my mind. If you find it unacceptable that I don't give this top priority...well, you are entitled to your opinion, etc.
Finally, let me say, I cannot deal with your recent efforts to build a 9-11 conspiracy blog. That's one area where your perspective is, shall we say, way different from mine. It's for that reason that I'm dropping your blog from the list on my blog. I don't just drop blogs whenever I disagree with them, but I do list blogs because I feel some affinity toward them. And given your emphasis on 9-11 conspiracies, and your strange agreement with ideas about Jewish conspiracy, I've just about lost affinity with this one. Though that shouldn't matter much anyway; you probably get a lot more readers than I do. And no desire to maintain hard feelings, either. Sure, I'd work with you for a shared purpose, a cause we both want to support. But our blogs are another matter, etc.-----
The answers to your pro Bush gate keeping is on my blog and many others. Anyone can just puruse this blog. Why say it all again?
P.S. Oh, yeah, one more thing... Just because our government and our ruling class, with the help of great technologies, can successfully murder and oppress people, that doesn't mean it doesn't have great flaws.
AS smeone who is campaigning against the idiocy as well as the visciousness of the child protective monster that terrorizes neighborhoods like y9uurs and mine I caould talk for hours about their incompetence, idiocy, ignorance and so forth. A friend of mine who is a computer prgrammer once told me though, that a system is designed to do what it does. (There Is A Method To Their madness.)
If the government were so perfect and so perfectly competent, we wouldn't have the present disaster in Iraq. And that's only the tip of the iceberg. Most lefists and revolutionaries by and large do not portray our government as being as all-powerful and infallible as most of the conspiracy theorists would like us to believe it is. And if we actually start to believe that the government is infallible, that gives us no hope of any successful resistance or transformation by the people, from "below." I admit, I'm more pessimistic about people's movements these days than I would like to be, but I'm glad that I haven't reached that point...
Straw man bashing. I never said they were perfectly anything. You have to admit though, they have been running this place for over two hundred years and though they've gone through some bad scrapes and tight squeezes, their system is still standing.
Richard S. said...
Hi, Eugene. I tried to answer this one time and pressed the wrong button or something and my message disappeared. I think, maybe, that's a signal that I should not spend a whole lot more time on this debate. I have no desire to engage in a "flame war."
I don't want to spend more time on a war of words with you either. I've had troble with blogger too, especially in using the comments section.
Regarding a few points:Re. the Hungarian Revolution: Imperialists would like to claim that this was a revolution to support their ideas, but from what I've read and heard, the most significant event in this revolution was the establishment of democratic workers' councils. That was a step toward a more genuine socialism (and an idea/process that we have seen pursued throughout history in attempts to advance toward real socialism).
Well, please find me one veteran of the Hungarian counter revolution who will back up your argument. Let me remind you that workers, or more correctly some people who earn most of their incomes by working for others, have conflicting interests and individuals and groups of workers can have interests that conflict with those of the world working class or proletariat (proletarians being those who have nothing to lose save their chains, a description that doesn't seem to fit with lots of wage and salary earners in the corrupt imperialist countries.) It was certainly tough being a Hungarian worker in 1956. The West was engaging in economic warfare against the Eastern (less developed and war devastated)bloc, and the USSR was still getting reparations from Hungary which if you recall, was an Axis nation that had participated in the despoiling of the USSR and massacres of its people. It certainly would have been attractive to many of these workers to break out of the Soviet orbit and perhaps get an oportunity to "come in from the cold." And no doubt Soviet troops under among other influences that of Ilya Ehrenberg had brutalized the ordinary Hungarian masses and left more than a small amount of anger resentment and hatred. Stalin also used many Jewish people as his hands, eyes and ears in Hungary and the other Central European nations, even after he had chased most Jews out of positions of influence in the USSR itself. Perhaps this is why some Hungarian Jews were lynched in refugee camps.(?)
In Venezuela, many workers in the oil industry participated in the "strike" against the Chavez elected populist government and they formed councils and committees to organize themselves (in alliance of course with their bosses and with the US of A. Around 19,000 of these were fired and are a bunch of very angry puppies today. I can also tell you that from what my wife tells me there are those people who do support Chavez more or less but who are still fearful of a full on confrontation with the US, people who would surely hope it doesn't happen and who still do believe a lot of negative things they have been told over the years about Cuba. There are wage earners, especially those of higher pay grades who really are depositories of human capital, who side with the opposition and who oppose egalitarian measures that lessen their own relative superiority in economic competition, like the near total elimination of illiteracy, availablity of greater levels of education for those children whose parents who cannot afford private schools, etc.
Re. the comment that by saying that if I would not have rooted for the U.S.S.R. between 1921 and 1990, I have something in common with Adolf Hitler(?)... That is a bit silly. Perhaps we had no choice but to "root for" the Russians, among the other allies, during a couple of years of WWII. However, I would never entertain the idea that if we did not support the USSR in general, throughout history, it would be legitimate to remark that we had something in common with Hitler.
Right, "we had no choice" and the USSR did not have to be perfect.
I mentioned 1921 because that was the time of the brutal suppression of the Kronstadt anarchist rebellion in the Ukraine. A lot of people see that as a turning point. Trotskyists may draw the line at the ascension of Stalin, which didn't come long after. Either way, the Russian Revolution, which did hold promise initially, was ultimately betrayed, and failed to achieve anything close real socialism. In fact, the USSR acted to suppress attempts to achieve real socialism - especially the aspect known as workers' democracy - a number of times throughout history. What we got in the USSR, in "Red China," etc., was state capitalism. (If you don't know what that means, I can send a few links or something. It's a fairly common observation these days - initially espoused by left communists and some social democrats, and eventually agreed upon by some Trotskyist groups as well.) Maybe these states formed a useful rival to the capitalist powers of the West. But I don't think I could ever had "rooted for" them. I could only root for attempts to achieve something better, which we have seen throughout modern history, which usually were brutally suppressed by outside forces, be they capitalist or state capitalist. But no time to go much more into the big historical analysis right now.
If "state capitalism" is the name of the system that did away with illiteracy and built an enviable education system for a nation of illiterate peasants and poor workers, that created written languages for peoples who had had no alphabets, if it was "state capitalism" that held the US in some form of check for forty years after having defeated Nazism, if it was "state capitalism" that held off the onslaught against Cuba, well then it isn't all so bad. If that's the best system that could come out of Russia with all its internal contradictions, poverty, external pressures, well then, that system needed to be defended, which is not the same thing as never criticizing (constructively) or the same thing opposing genuine revolutionaries who would have tried to make it better without destroying the gains that had been made, (and without selling out to the imperialist camp of blood sucker nations in hopes of gaining entry to it) and as opposed to pushing the country back into the abyss of Third Worldism, and selling it for pennies on the dollar to a small circle of oligarchs, most of whom just happened to be of that small minority ethnic group you feel we should not speak of.
I am utterly baffled by your ideas promoting the idea of a Jewish conspiracy. I might point out that the vast majority of people holding wealth and power in the U.S. and elsewhere have been WASPs. (Additionally, many people who have opposed such power are Jews - as you yourself pointed out in your earlier disagreements with me.) But I have no desire to pursue that argument, because I do not choose to claim that the source of the problem is any ethnicity or race. That kind of thinking says to us that we are guilty because of whichever ethnicity we are born into, regardless of what we do in life, regardless of our material circumstances, etc. I don't follow that line of thinking at all.
Far far out of proportion are the numbers of Jewish "think tankers" Jewish media mavens, Jewish rich and super rich, Jewish politicians and judges, Jews who fought actively and overtly against affirmative action, who brain trusted and hyped the Iraq war and who frame their world view around what they see as "good for the Jews" and for Israel, as opposed to what is good for their own nation, or more ideally what is good for the human race, the oppressed, the proletarians, the discriminated against. To make believe this is not so or to demonize anyone who notices this is wrong headed and insults the intelligence of millions of people who do notice this, do have questions, do not like it and are not racist haters or motivated by any such thing. You might notice that in my blog I have spoken well of many Jews, spoken of the positive side of the Jewish impact; those who opposed the Vietnam war, those who question authority, those who literally went to the wall against the Vietnam war and in solidarity with Black revolutionaries (for good example the Weatherpeople.) You build a straw man in order to attack it, in order to try to run away from a rather large elephant that's in the room.
You say that because I am white, I never would be rounded up indiscriminately by the police? I disagree. In Staten Island, I had a roommate, also white, who was rounded up in police sweeps. I also knew someone else, also white, who was indiscriminately stopped and harassed. The reason was that we lived in a poor neighborhood. There was, of course, a racist motivation in these sweeps because it was a mostly black neighborhood. But sometimes whites were subject to even more suspicion for being in this poor, black neighborhood. If I said "never" that was wrong. I try never to say "never." I think you make my case here. I can also cite a case of a white woman who lived in The South Bronx, who because she came out of a check cashing place with some cash during a police street sweep of black and latino people not only was rounded up but had the cash taken from her, and was charged with having drug money on her and her children were left without her and with no word as to her whereabouts for more than a day. Of course this did not happen at Trump Towers or even in Riverdale or Howard Beach. She was "collateral damage" in an everyday run of the mill assault on the Black community.
Ultimately, the reason for being attacked by the police was being in a poor neighborhood. (Can you say "black?") Because, in the U.S., and in other places subject to the rule of right-wing capitalism, poverty is considered a crime. Look at the incarceration statsitics. Can you say "black?" There may be some legitimacy to the argument that in these high-crime neighborhoods, there has to be more effort put into controlling crime (until we have a different kind of society where we don't need to depend on an authoritarian police force to supposedly keep down crime). But ultimately, the crime for which the greatest number of people are attacked, harassed and punished is the crime of poverty. Not possibly "breathing while black?"
I also don't consider myself immune from police harassment, etc., even in other neighborhoods. I was followed by police and put under surveillance for my participation in anarchist groups during the anti-WEF demonstrations of 2002. Police literally followed me all over town, (You sound a bit like a paranoid conspitracy guy here, but truth is I believe you and really people who deny that kinds of these things happen are only making it easier for the government to do it more do it harder and do it with impunity.) and I have reason to believe they were monitoring me for weeks. (And it's a strong possibility that they still are doing so, and that our conversation is being monitored too. I base that on real experience, not far-fetched ideas about conspiracies.) And what did I do to deserve this attention? I'm still trying to figure that out. I let some members of an anarchist group stay in my house. I helped to organize an anarchist benefit. And I walked with a group of people on a street where the police state declared that a group of people were not allowed to walk. That last item is the only thing that I did that was "illegal." But that's not really relevant. Such are the rewards for being a citizen of this great "free" country called the U.S.A. I think you have to agree that the police surveillance and harrassment you speak of is not the same thing as the ongoing "operation Condor" drug sweeps, stop and frisks, 41 bullet type things the black community has to endure. You made yourself an enemy of the status quo. You showed signs of "racial treason" by being among the first or only whites to live in a given neighborhood and so yes, they respond, don't they?
I don't consider renouncing my "Israeli citizenship" as a major thing on my "to do" list. I admit I'm not doing a lot in general lately, I know and I made a good faith suggestion of something that might matter, but not to worry I can do it without you. but when I do things and write things, I have a lot of stuff on my mind other than whether I should renounce Israeli citizenship. So do I but it does bother me also a lot, because one should not want to be seen as or be in fact any type of Israeli citizen which you and I are as long as the Israhelli governmnent has a place open for you and for me and not for any non Jew in a settlement or immigrant town that belongs to ethnically cleansed Palestinians. I think we are being oppressed more and more through a relentless class war. I feel it personally through a decline in my own prospects and living standards (and I think we all must act at least in part based on our personal experiences and personal struggles), and I see it all around me. I also see "our" government taking greater and greater measures to suppress the public's civil liberties and establish a police state. (And the Democrats aren't much better than the Republicans on that front; in fact, they are working together in many ways.) Of course, all of this is connected, and the alliance between "our" ruling class and that of the State of Israel is certainly not irrelevant. But my hypothetical Israeli "citizenship" (and renouncing same) just isn't the first item on my list or in my mind. If you find it unacceptable that I don't give this top priority...well, you are entitled to your opinion, etc.
Finally, let me say, I cannot deal with your recent efforts to build a 9-11 conspiracy blog. That's one area where your perspective is, shall we say, way different from mine. It's for that reason that I'm dropping your blog from the list on my blog. I don't just drop blogs whenever I disagree with them, but I do list blogs because I feel some affinity toward them. And given your emphasis on 9-11 conspiracies, and your strange agreement with ideas about Jewish conspiracy, I've just about lost affinity with this one. Though that shouldn't matter much anyway; you probably get a lot more readers than I do. And no desire to maintain hard feelings, either. Sure, I'd work with you for a shared purpose, a cause we both want to support. But our blogs are another matter, etc.-----
The answers to your pro Bush gate keeping is on my blog and many others. Anyone can just puruse this blog. Why say it all again?
P.S. Oh, yeah, one more thing... Just because our government and our ruling class, with the help of great technologies, can successfully murder and oppress people, that doesn't mean it doesn't have great flaws.
AS smeone who is campaigning against the idiocy as well as the visciousness of the child protective monster that terrorizes neighborhoods like y9uurs and mine I caould talk for hours about their incompetence, idiocy, ignorance and so forth. A friend of mine who is a computer prgrammer once told me though, that a system is designed to do what it does. (There Is A Method To Their madness.)
If the government were so perfect and so perfectly competent, we wouldn't have the present disaster in Iraq. And that's only the tip of the iceberg. Most lefists and revolutionaries by and large do not portray our government as being as all-powerful and infallible as most of the conspiracy theorists would like us to believe it is. And if we actually start to believe that the government is infallible, that gives us no hope of any successful resistance or transformation by the people, from "below." I admit, I'm more pessimistic about people's movements these days than I would like to be, but I'm glad that I haven't reached that point...
Straw man bashing. I never said they were perfectly anything. You have to admit though, they have been running this place for over two hundred years and though they've gone through some bad scrapes and tight squeezes, their system is still standing.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)