by Howard Zinn
Progressive Magazine

It seems very hard for some people–especially those in high places, but also those striving for high places–to grasp a simple truth: The United States does not belong in Iraq. It is not our country. Our presence is causing death, suffering, destruction, and so large sections of the population are rising against us. Our military is then reacting with indiscriminate force, bombing and shooting and rounding up people simply on “suspicion.”

Amnesty International, a year after the invasion, reported: “Scores of unarmed people have been killed due to excessive or unnecessary use of lethal force by coalition forces during public demonstrations, at checkpoints, and in house raids. Thousands of people have been detained [estimates range from 8,500 to 15,000], often under harsh conditions, and subjected to prolonged and often unacknowledged detention. Many have been tortured or ill-treated, and some have died in custody.”

The recent battles in Fallujah brought this report from Amnesty International: “Half of at least 600 people who died in the recent fighting between Coalition forces and insurgents in Fallujah are said to have been civilians, many of them women and children.”

In light of this, any discussion of “What do we do now?” must start with the understanding that the present U.S. military occupation is morally unacceptable.

The suggestion that we simply withdraw from Iraq is met with laments: “We mustn’t cut and run. . . . We must stay the course. . . . Our reputation will be ruined. . . .” That is exactly what we heard when, at the start of the Vietnam escalation, some of us called for immediate withdrawal. The result of staying the course was 58,000 Americans and several million Vietnamese dead.

“We can’t leave a vacuum there.” I think it was John Kerry who said that. What arrogance to think that when the United States leaves a place there’s nothing there! The same kind of thinking saw the enormous expanse of the American West as “empty territory” waiting for us to occupy it, when hundreds of thousands of Indians lived there already.

The history of military occupations of Third World countries is that they bring neither democracy nor security. The long U.S. occupation of the Philippines, following a bloody war in which American troops finally subdued the Filipino independence movement, did not lead to democracy, but rather to a succession of dictatorships, ending with Ferdinand Marcos.

The long U.S. occupations of Haiti (1915-1934) and the Dominican Republic (1916-1926) led only to military rule and corruption in both countries.

The only rational argument for continuing on the present course is that things will be worse if we leave. There will be chaos, there will be civil war, we are told. In Vietnam, supporters of the war promised a bloodbath if U.S. troops withdrew. That did not happen.
full article

by Matthew Rothschild
Progressive Magazine

Bush’s announcement that he intends to appoint John Negroponte to be the U.S. ambassador to Iraq should appall anyone who respects human rights.

Negroponte, currently U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., was U.S. ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s and was intimately involved with Reagan’s dirty war against the Sandinistas of Nicaragua. Reagan waged much of that illegal contra war from Honduras, and Negroponte was his point man.

According to a detailed investigation the Baltimore Sun did in 1995, Negroponte covered up some of the most grotesque human rights abuses imaginable.

The CIA organized, trained, and financed an army unit called Battalion 316, the paper said. Its specialty was torture. And it kidnapped, tortured, and killed hundreds of Hondurans, the Sun reported. It “used shock and suffocation devices in interrogations. Prisoners often were kept naked and, when no longer useful, killed and buried in unmarked graves.”

The U.S. embassy in Honduras knew about the human rights abuses but did not want this embarrassing information to become public, the paper said.

“Determined to avoid questions in Congress, U.S. officials in Honduras concealed evidence of human rights abuses,” the Sun reported. Negroponte has denied involvement, and prior to his confirmation by the Senate for his U.N. post, he testified, “I do not believe that death squads were operating in Honduras.”

But this is what the Baltimore Sun said: “The embassy was aware of numerous kidnappings of leftists.” It also said that Negroponte played an active role in whitewashing human rights abuses.

“Specific examples of brutality by the Honduran military typically never appeared in the human rights reports, prepared by the embassy under the direct supervision of Ambassador Negroponte,” the paper wrote. ” The reports from Honduras were carefully crafted to leave the impression that the Honduran military respected human rights.”

So this is the man who is going to show the Iraqis the way toward democracy?

More likely, as the insurgency increases, this will be the man who will oversee and hush up any brutal repression that may ensue.
http:www.progressive.org/webex04/wx022004.html

by Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank
Thursday 29 April 2004 1:21 PM GMT

German special police secure anti-Semitism meet

A two-day international conference on anti-Semitism in Berlin has drawn criticism from Palestinians who have described it as a “red herring” and a “sly distraction” aimed at diverting attention from their oppression by Israel.
The conference, held under the auspices of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), is expected to issue a set of decisions and recommendations linking “some” anti-Israeli sentiments to anti-Semitism.
Clause-3 of the conference’s summary statement says that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should not be allowed to serve as a cover for the expression of anti-Semitic positions and opinions.
Moreover, the 55-nation forum has effectively agreed that there is a link between criticising Israeli actions and policies on the one hand and expressions of classical anti-Semitism.
Speaking at the conference on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Collin Powell pointed out in a short speech that while criticising Israel was legitimate, the line is crossed when critics employ Nazi symbolism to do so.
“It is not anti-Semitism to criticise Israel, but the line is crossed when the leaders of Israel are demonised and vilified by the use of Nazi symbols.”

Ignored
Powell and other speakers, however, ignored the use of Nazi symbols and comparisons by Israeli officials to demonise Arab and Muslim leaders.
Only Irish Foreign Minister Brian Cowen, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, voiced a more balanced approach to the issue of racial hatred.
He told the forum that it was wrong to use “race” for political reasons, either as an offensive weapon or as a shield to fend off criticisms.
OSCE meet diverts attention from Israeli oppression of Palestinians
Palestinian academics, while denouncing anti-Semitism as a morbid phenomenon, have voiced deep misgivings about the conference and especially its “tendentious timing”.
Mahmud Nammura, an author who writes extensively about anti-Semitism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, called the Berlin conference a “red herring” and “sly distraction”.
“It is a shame that instead of paying attention to the Nazi-like persecution of the defenceless Palestinian people at Israel’s hands, the OSCE is effectively telling Israel that it is ok to continue to slaughter Palestinians and destroy their homes since opposing these crimes would be a form of anti-Semitism.”
full article

…the West would have had to invent them. Well, of course they did. The modern anti-American wave of Shi’ite fundamentalists first appeared on the scene in Iran as a result of the CIA coup that put the Shah in power there.

The Shah was so determined to Westernize Iran that it was against the law for Muslim women to fully veil themselves in public. The fundamentalist backlash that put Ayatollah Khomeini in power was fueled not only by events in Iran, but by American and European support of and tolerance for the creation of what amounts to an Apartheid state in Palestine. This in the wake of a half century’s occupation by the British, who drew national boundaries where there had been none, including around the powder-keg we refer to now as ‘Iraq.’ During the disastrous Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the United States covertly supported our future public-enemy #1, Osama bin Laden. The mujaheddein morphed into al Qaeda before the world’s eyes, making it clear that the basic issue in the Middle East for the past century has been rage-rage against the permutations of European and American imperialism, and fundamentalism rears its ugly head always among people who feel they are under seige, who feel that their essential way of life is being threatened.

Pundits shake their heads and point out sadly all the things the Muslim world is apparently incapable of, incapable of “modernity,” that new vogue term, incapable of democracy, incapable of peaceful self-determination. Well really, who would know? The region has not known a moment’s respite from the onslaught of the West for the past 150 years. There is no telling what the most resource-rich region in the world would be like had it been left alone. Now it seems we will never know. The same goes for Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and much of Asia.
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…the West would have had to invent them. Well, of course they did. The modern anti-American wave of Shi’ite fundamentalists first appeared on the scene in Iran as a result of the CIA coup that put the Shah in power there.

The Shah was so determined to Westernize Iran that it was against the law for Muslim women to fully veil themselves in public. The fundamentalist backlash that put Ayatollah Khomeini in power was fueled not only by events in Iran, but by American and European support of and tolerance for the creation of what amounts to an Apartheid state in Palestine. This in the wake of a half century’s occupation by the British, who drew national boundaries where there had been none, including around the powder-keg we refer to now as ‘Iraq.’ During the disastrous Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the United States covertly supported our future public-enemy #1, Osama bin Laden. The mujaheddein morphed into al Qaeda before the world’s eyes, making it clear that the basic issue in the Middle East for the past century has been rage-rage against the permutations of European and American imperialism, and fundamentalism rears its ugly head always among people who feel they are under seige, who feel that their essential way of life is being threatened.

Pundits shake their heads and point out sadly all the things the Muslim world is apparently incapable of, incapable of “modernity,” that new vogue term, incapable of democracy, incapable of peaceful self-determination. Well really, who would know? The region has not known a moment’s respite from the onslaught of the West for the past 150 years. There is no telling what the most resource-rich region in the world would be like had it been left alone. Now it seems we will never know. The same goes for Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and much of Asia.
(more…)

Asa Hilliard III

“Segregation,” “desegregation,” “integration” and “assimilation” are key words that have served as lenses through which racial inequity and oppression through schooling have been viewed and understood. This language is not a compatible fit with the real world of schools, teaching and learning, nor does it reflect an understanding of the full dimensions of the problem.

Before Brown, Carter Woodson and W.E.B. Du Bois were among the few who grasped the robustness of the white supremacy social order, and its manifestation in the structure and function of the schools. Segregation was not merely the coerced separation of the “races” in schools. It was a total structure of domination, which included the uses of all major societal institutions–law, mass media, criminal justice, religion, science, school curriculum, spectator sports, art, music, etc.

These agencies provided the propaganda and legitimacy that resulted not only in coerced physical segregation but in a false school curriculum; the control over African schooling by segregationists; the defamation of African culture; the disruption of African institutions of family, ethnic group identity and solidarity; prevention of wealth accumulation; blocked access to communication; the teaching of white supremacy and African inferiority; and more. The Brown decision addressed mainly two things: physical segregation and financial inequalities in school funding. While Brown was a major challenge to the structure of racial domination by heroic advocates and activists, the decision fell far short of addressing the totality of the school problem, which continues to lie in the larger domination structure. “Integrating” the schools did not eliminate the ideology of white supremacy from which “segregation” derived.

In the absence of a real understanding of the structure of domination, some of the worst elements of segregation have returned, in new guises.
http://www.nation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040503&c=5&s=forum
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Dark Matter
By Chris Floyd  
Friday, Apr. 9, 2004. Page 116

This summer, the human race will pass a sinister milestone. It will come quietly, creeping like a thief in the night — a starless night, the sky blanked by a minatory shadow.

For while the world’s attention will be turned this July toward the bloody carnage erupting in Iraq after the illusory turnover of “sovereignty” by the still-entrenched occupation force, and riveted by the flood of sewage pouring from the White House as the presidential campaign reaches critical mass, the United States will break a long-held taboo and launch the first weapon into the global commons of outer space.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/photos/large/2004_04/2004_04_09/floyd_2.jpg

It’s a small step, a test satellite called the “Near Field Infrared Experiment,” set for launch — by a Minotaur missile, no less — this summer from a NASA base in Virginia. NFIRE is part of the Bush Regime’s multibillion-dollar, crony-feeding boondoggle known as “missile defense.” The satellite’s primary mission is to gather data on the exhaust fumes of rockets in space, information that will then be used to help future space weapons differentiate more clearly between a target and its trailing plume.

But NFIRE is itself weaponized, carrying a projectile-packed “kill vehicle” that can destroy passing missiles — or the satellites of the United States’ military and commercial rivals, as ABC News reported last week. This marks the first time in history that any nation has put a weapon in space, despite America’s still-official policy against such a practice. And as Pentagon officials made clear in an eye-opening presentation to Congress in February, NFIRE’s test is just the first spark of a conflagration that will soon set the heavens ablaze with American weaponry capable of striking — and destroying — any spot on earth. As one top Pentagon official — opposed to this lunatic proliferation, thus remaining anonymous — said: “We’re crossing the Rubicon into space weaponization.”

The ABC report — largely ignored, except by the Irish Examiner and some specialist web sites — was strangely incomplete, however. It noted only that there is a $68 million appropriation for NFIRE buried in the 2005 military budget — leaving the implication that the project is still on the drawing board.

But in fact, NFIRE is already operational. It began in August 2002 and has moved steadily toward its long-established Summer 2004 launch date, according to NASA and press releases from the private contractors involved. The Pentagon’s own published specs for the mission state clearly: “The Generation 2 kill vehicle will be integrated into the near-field experiment payload” when the spacecraft launches in summer 2004. The Minotaur missile that will haul the weapon into orbit was ordered by the Pentagon in January 2003, Orbital Sciences Corporation reports. Doubtless there will more NFIREs burning in 2005 as well, but the weaponization of space is not some distant prospect: That dark future is now.

And the boys in Space Command are just getting warmed up. They wowed the salivating Bushist faithful in Congress with highly detailed plans for a whizbang space arsenal led by the “Rods From God” — bundles of tungsten rods fired from orbiting platforms, hurtling toward earth at 3,700 meters per second, accurate within a range of 8 meters and able to destroy even the most hardened targets, the Center for Defense Information reports. They could be launched at only a few minutes’ notice at any target on the planet.

“God’s Rods” will be accompanied by orbiting lasers, “hunter-killer” satellites, and space bombers that needn’t bother with silly-billy legal worries about “overflight rights” from other countries, but can descend out of the ether to swoop down on any uppity nation that displeases the world-Caesar in Washington.

This belligerent Buck-Rogering, long a gleam in many a militarist’s eye, gained relentless momentum with the arrival of Don Rumsfeld as Pentagon war chief. In the late 1990s, while helping Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz plot their “Project for the New American Century” — wholesale militarization of U.S. policy, aggressive war (including the invasion of Iraq even if Saddam Hussein was no longer there), “global dominance” of “vital energy resources,” etc. — Rumsfeld also headed a “blue-ribbon panel” of the usual Establishment worthies looking into “the role of space in national security.” Their conclusion? You guessed it: Rummy said America must garrison the heavens to prevent a — wait for it — “space Pearl Harbor.”

Oddly enough, over at PNAC, at about the same time, Rummy and Cheney were speaking openly about the possibility of a “new Pearl Harbor” that would “catalyze the American people” into supporting their plans, which were published in September 2000. Space weaponization — via “missile defense” — was an essential part of the scheme. Once in office, they shoveled billions to their favored defense cartels and fast-tracked space-weapon programs. Indeed, National Security Advisor Condi Rice intended to crown these early efforts with a major speech enshrining the Bush Regime’s “top priority” for national security: “missile defense.”

Unfortunately, the speech — scheduled for Sept. 11, 2001 — had to be canceled due to the “new Pearl Harbor” that struck that day, the Washington Post reported last week. But the plan and its long-standing priorities — invasion of Iraq, military control of Central Asia, space weaponization — continued without missing a beat, though clothed now in the expedient rhetoric of a “global war on terror.”

Of course, with each passing day, Bush’s PNAC centerpiece — the rape of Iraq — is actually breeding more terror, more hatred for America, more risk for the people he rules with such ignorant, blood-flecked insouciance. But this doesn’t matter; what matters is the plan, the dominance. And so space too must be conquered, at any cost, until the whole world is under cosmic military occupation — a global Fallujah, seething with chaos and fury.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/04/09/120.html

Assumptions about the U.S. Strategy in Iraq

The leftist press is full of sarcastic mockery about the rapidly deteriorating situation in Iraq, pointing out that a fool could have seen this mess coming. Candidate Kerry speaks of ineptitude. He doesn’t suggest for a second getting the U.S. out of there, but instead talks like Nixon did during the ’68 campaign: if you elect me I’ll do this war right.

I believe that we are way beyond ineptitude here: what we are seeing I fear is the unfolding of a horrifically misguided but well thought-out strategy, which may well include something along the lines of ‘bombing them back into the stone-age,’ them being everything east of Israel. Read Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations (1993), a conservative manifesto which lays out the ideological basis for going after Islam and making sure that part of the world is silenced effectively and forever.

I have no doubt that another large-scale terrorist attack on the United States is all it will take to prime the American populace for a full-scale nuclear attack on Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq…take your pick. Call me crazy. I’m having many dark thoughts these days.
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John Rapley – FOREIGN FOCUS

IN THE late summer of 2001, America could have been forgiven for feeling smug. ‘Victory’ in the Cold War was a decade old, and in the period between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the new millennium, the country’s technological edge over its rivals had widened. Her military dominance rivalled that of Britain in the late 19th century. The ease of her campaigns ­ subduing Iraq in a matter of weeks, bringing Slobodan Milosevic to heel without a loss of American life ­ testified to a supremacy nobody could contest. The world quaked before US might, and as President Bill Clinton had testified in his 1992 acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention, the world was America’s oyster.
www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20040415/cleisure/cleisure4.html

by Thalif Deen, Inter Press Service

UNITED NATIONS – The United States and France have intimidated Caribbean countries into delaying an official request for a probe into the murky circumstances under which Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted from power in February, according to diplomatic sources here.

The two veto-wielding permanent members of the 15-nation Security Council have signaled to Caribbean nations that they do not want a U.N. probe of Aristide’s ouster.

Any attempts to bring the issue or even introduce a resolution before the Security Council will either be blocked or vetoed by both countries, council sources told IPS.
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