ETERNAL VIGILANCE

Don't Panic, Warmongers

I'm here to bail your sorry asses out

by Matthew Barganier

Alright, listen up, warmongers. I've decided to help you. No, really. You can thank me later.

I'm not doing this out of any sympathy, or because you shamed me into it. As a friend put it several months ago, Iraq is "your goddamn mess - you be constructive." He was a bit generous, though, to assume that you guys could be constructive, that you could think your way out of a wet paper bag instead of just bombing it back to that Stone Age you laptop LeMays are so fond of. You have demonstrated at every turn that problem-solving is not your forte, and now some of you are running scared. From the Moonie Times to National Refuse, there has been an outbreak of antebellum amnesia, a malady I suspect will soon rival avian flu for contagiousness. I won't forget how you sold this war, nor will I stop reminding everyone else. But out of patriotism - with no partisan interest whatsoever - I will help you avert the comeuppance you so richly deserve.

Here's the bitter remedy, in three doses:

1) Withdraw completely from Iraq.

Now, you can keep American forces there indefinitely if blood, money, and time are no object (as they rarely are when they belong to someone else). Let's say you're willing to expend 30,000 American soldiers, trillions of taxpayer dollars, and 20 years, plus whatever domestic blowback such an occupation will entail. Heck, let's say you're willing to expend even more. The insurgents won't be able to defeat you militarily. But at some point you're going to have to leave, switch from Pause to Play, and let the Iraqis succeed or fail at independence, independently. Why not now, before the toll rings the public's bell?

Your pride is going to sting a bit, as well it should, but not nearly so much as it will if you wait until a Beirut-style bombing finally occurs. Ponder that eventuality for a moment.

What will fill the vacuum? Civil war? Iranian theocracy? A terrorist cesspool? (Oh wait, you've already managed to create that last one.) Who knows. I'm not gonna kid you, either: there's going to be some pain, for which you'll always be partially responsible. If some Iraqi orphan who lost his family to your bombs and sanctions decides to exact some unspeakable vengeance 10 years from now, it will be partly your fault. But as long as you're there, pouring gas on the stovetop, every blaze is entirely your fault. Once you leave, the onus for putting out fires will fall on the Iraqis. And given the attention span of the American public, most voters will forget your culpability within months.

Furthermore, though a decent outcome in Iraq is far from certain, the slim chance it does have depends upon your leaving. Mind if I borrow a little Straussian wisdom for my best-case scenario? It goes a little something like this: You begin withdrawing now, slightly ahead of the bogus June 30 deadline, citing the irrepressible nature of the current uprisings. It won't be true, of course – you could "win" these particular skirmishes through attrition or annihilation, and everyone knows it. The insurgents are praying that you'll go Rambo and martyr them. Don't oblige them. Just pack it up, have the band play "The World Turned Upside Down" as you leave, and let the Iraqis call Fallujah their Yorktown. The radicals have seen the devastation you can wreak on their country should they decide to get sassy later on. The Shi'ites and Sunnis, drawn together by their hatred of occupation, will find a way to coexist – probably through some sort of home-grown federalism that also solves the Kurdish problem. Eventually, Iraqi elites will develop an Ameriphilia comparable to our own Anglophilia. Average Iraqis will show Americans the same stupid deference that Americans show Tony Blair and Christopher Hitchens.

Pretty rosy, huh? But it won't work if you stop there.

2) Kick Israel off of the dole.

There's no reason to be nasty about it. You don't have to single out Israel, nor should you. Simply announce an end to all foreign aid (as I recall, that used to be a major goal for conservatives). See ya, Egypt. So long, Uzbekistan. Later, Haiti. The handouts benefit neither them nor us.

The same goes for Israel. As I wrote last summer,

"Ironically, all of that money has retarded the growth of a viable Jewish state in the Middle East. By enabling Israeli leaders to act like bullies, American aid prolongs Israel's painful adolescence and creates the illusion that the country never has to grow up. Sharon, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Benny Elon live in a fantasy world where, thanks to U.S. favoritism, Israel will never have to get along with its neighbors. Can such a nation survive? If nothing else, demography and economics suggest otherwise."

Aid to Israel is a prime source of Muslim hostility toward the U.S., but surely a mirror effect also exists. How much can it benefit Israel, which at least confines its pestering of Muslims to a limited area, to be at the end of the Great Satan's leash?

An independent Israel and an independent Iraq would finally have something in common, which is always a good starting point for peace. At the very least Iraqi rabble-rousers would have little ammunition for an anti-American jihad.

So far, so good, right? And the last part is the easiest.

3) Define the capture or death of Osama bin Laden as the endgame in the War on Terror.

The only way to extract yourselves from this absurdity is to redefine the mission. Bin Laden authored the 9/11 attack, not Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad, Hizbollah, ETA, or the Irish Republican Army. Reassure the Muslims (and everyone else) that you plan to catch the perpetrator and go home, not invade the world. You might be surprised by how cooperative some folks will be – especially your weary hosts in Central Asia.

I know, I know, this plan pales next to a "World War IV" or a "clash of civilizations," but it has the slight advantage of actually being winnable. Even if you don't apprehend Osama, you can keep his network disrupted until the old codger bites it.

So there it is - hostilities reduced, attacks averted, and justice served, in three easy steps. I doubt you'll take a single one of them. But never say that I was not constructive.

Greenspan's Choice: Scylla or Charybdis?

by Nelson Hultberg
April 25, 2004

In Homer's famous epic, the Odyssey, its hero Ulysses must endure a long series of dangerous adventures in his journey home from the Trojan Wars. He and his men come under fire at every turn, as some new, death-threatening predicament is thrust upon them in their efforts to find their way back to their wives and families. The one-eyed monster Cyclops imprisons them in his cave, while the beautiful seductress Circe turns Ulysses' men into swine. The Sirens force Ulysses to tie himself to the ship's mast so as not to be lured to his death by their irresistible songs.

While navigating the narrow Strait of Messina, he and his men confront the twin perils of Scylla and Charybdis. Scylla is a monster with multiple dogs' heads that lives in a cave on the shore; and whenever sailors come too close, she pulls them up and devours them. In order to avoid her, however, ships have to pass closely by another monster on the opposite side of the strait, Charybdis, who is equally hideous and sucks unfortunate travelers to their deaths in an all-consuming whirlpool.

From the days of Homer on, this plight in life where one has to choose between two opposite evils became known to the Greeks as being between Scylla and Charybdis. In our modern day, this conflict has come to be known as "being between the devil and the deep blue sea," or "being between a rock and a hard spot." The Greeks had a more eloquent style in describing it, but the essence of the dilemma remains the same. There are certain times in life when people and societies have worked themselves into a choice where both alternatives spell calamity, and the margin of escape is extremely thin or non-existent. They often have no way out, with their only choice being to decide which of the two calamities is less destructive.

We in America are now in one of those situations, and there is no way out other than to choose one of the calamities as our fate. The two calamities that confront us are massive DEFLATION, or runaway INFLATION. We have worked ourselves into this ghastly predicament because of a long series of misguided (and perhaps at times purposely evil) choices that we and our leaders have made throughout the 20th century. The year 1910 was when this morality play began.

When America's prominent bankers and politicians met on Jekyll Island off the coast of Georgia in November of that year to hatch their plan to monopolize the nation's banking system, they set in motion forces that have now carried us to our modern day Strait of Messina -- between Scylla and Charybdis. The horrible aspect about all this is that we have no brave Ulysses to lead us through the treacherous waters. We have only Alan Greenspan, who has demonstrated throughout his career that he knows how to dissemble, obfuscate, and lust after power, but not how to lead and navigate his country toward the smooth waters of economic truth.

As the esteemed Richard Russell has written, "Alan Greenspan...of all people knows all about the Federal Reserve and money and gold. For this reason, I consider him one of the great 'sell-outs' of today. Not only has Greenspan headed the Fed (he should have denounced it, not headed it) but he turned out to be the greatest inflationist in American history.
"Ultimately, as this bear market moves through its second and then final phase, it will be seen how Greenspan, in allowing debt to build to obscene proportions, caused untold harm and suffering to the people of the U.S. Some will say that Greenspan did what he thought best for the nation. In his guts, I'm convinced that Greenspan knew better, but that he gave into his giant ego." [Dow Theory Letters, April 19, 2004]

This is certainly true. Sir Alan got caught up in the trappings of power. He enjoyed having Wall Street treat him like a god. He loved having the bigwigs of Congress grovel at his feet. He relished riding around in the black limousines. He knew early on that gold, not paper, was money. He knew that Keynesianism was hokum. In his youth, he had been a follower of Ludwig von Mises and a colleague of the famous laissez-faire advocate, Ayn Rand. He knew the history of statist regimes, and why they hated gold so much. After all he penned a profound defense of gold for Rand's Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal in 1966. Yet somehow he forgot all the truths of his younger days and bought into the self-delusions spawned from his megalomania.

It has been reported that Ayn Rand once remarked at a party in the late fifties about Greenspan, "Oh, Alan is so brilliant, but he's such a social climber." Seems she pegged him rather well, for Mr. Greenspan certainly became quite skilled in the climbing game that makes up Wall Street and Washington.

One can imagine Sir Alan at a martini lunch with Bill Clinton and Bob Rubin in 1995 listening to the two of them outline their plan to create a "pseudo-strong dollar." By leasing gold to Rubin's buddies on Wall Street who would then sell it to the market, the central banks could continue listing it on their books as an asset. The public could be kept in the dark, and consequently the Forex markets would not get alarmed. The dollar could then be hyperinflated, and Clinton could then be reelected in 1996 despite the Republicans rising power with their Contract for America.
Greenspan surely had to suppress the moral warning lights in his brain to buy into such deception. But buy into it he did, because he desperately wanted that third term as head of the Federal Reserve, and the path to it was determined by courting the favor of Clinton and Rubin.

Such are the temptations that accompany the power game in the political swamps of Washington. They are the same today as they were in Ulysses' day. The difference is that Ulysses rejected the temptations that life's crucible threw at him and fought to return to his beloved Penelope in Ithaca. Greenspan has succumbed to the temptations in order to ride around in black limousines for another four years. If Greenspan had possessed the integrity of Ulysses, he would have resigned in protest in 1996 and written a grand bestseller about Clinton's and Rubin's fraud, about the fallacies of the Fed, about the dire need for a renunciation of Keynesianism if the concept of a free society is to survive. But he didn't, and one must surmise that he didn't because he enjoyed the trappings of power more than he enjoyed justice and right principle.

As a result, we had the hallucinatory bubble of the late nineties, when we should have gone through a corrective recession in '96 and '97 to bring back some sanity to the markets. This is why politics and banking cannot be joined as we have done with the Federal Reserve cartel. Politicians like Bush and Clinton, along with bureaucrats like Greenspan and Rubin, will always hatch dangerous schemes to enhance their power and wealth at the expense of the people and their rights, at the expense of the country and its stability.

The Great Blanking Out

The paramount question that now confronts us and the rest of the world is which monster do we get consumed by, Scylla or Charybdis? Which devastating calamity is to come our way, hyperinflation or collapsing deflation?

Most of our pundit class, of course, denies that the choice is so stark. Wall Street lackeys like Kudlow and Cramer and the shills at the BLS continue to pour out their incredulous propaganda every week about how our economy has turned the corner, how innovative productivity will carry us through, how the consumers of America will stay steadfast, how increased capital expenditures are just over the horizon, etc. But then they have no choice but to blank out on reality if they wish to continue in their prominent positions on the power and celebrity ladders. The Keynesian paradigm they learned in their college days must be adhered to at all costs in order for their universe to appear sane. They must tell themselves that these Cassandras in the hard money community are wackos. A few rough spots may lie ahead; but the world's economies are not in any kind of meltdown danger. The modern era has solved the problem of the inflation-depression cycle through institution of the Federal Reserve and it's "multiplier effect." Monetary policy will smooth out the rough spots and ignite the economy again.

"Alas, regardless of their doom, the little victims play; / No sense have they of ills to come, / Nor care beyond today. / Thought would destroy their Paradise. / No more: where ignorance is bliss, / 'Tis folly to be wise."

So wrote the 18th century poet, Thomas Gray. To those of us who have not forgotten the eternal verities, he has summed up perfectly today's pundit herd of Washington and Wall Street. Our intellectual and political leaders have constructed a massive blank-out job in face of a reality of their own making that is just too horrendous to contemplate.
So they purge reason from their minds and revel in the bliss of ignorance.

The question then for all rational men is which monster do we get consumed by, Scylla or Charybdis? Hyperinflation or collapsing deflation? Upon this question hangs our future. Our Strait of Messina has narrowed too much, and we no longer can escape unscathed. We must now succumb to one of these calamities. Does the Fed realize this? Perhaps, but certainly the American people do not. Do Bush and his advisors realize this? Of course not, they are part of the establishment herd. They believe that the Fed's monopoly money is actually wealth. They believe that dross can be turned into gold. They believe the great Keynesian hoax that came to visit its destruction upon the 20th century.

A very intriguing question should be answered in the next few months: Does Greenspan realize the frightful nature of his choice, and how will he react to the dilemma? His term is up in June of this year. Will he opt for reappointment? Is Bush even willing to reappoint him? Or does Bush harbor hatred of Greenspan for his rate hikes in 1992 when his father was trying to get reelected against Clinton? I believe that a certain part of Bush's obsession with Iraq has been motivated by the desire to avenge his father against Saddam Hussein. If so, then perhaps Bush Jr. also dislikes Greenspan enough to affect his policy decisions on the matter. After all, Bernanke, an "open spigot" Keynesian, is waiting in the wings. Why not appoint him and bring on the helicopter money. Like all good Keynesians, Bernanke believes paper money is actually wealth and that no choice will ever be necessary between Scylla and Charybdis?

Such are the dilemmas that humans get themselves into because they wish to get more out of life than they are willing to put in. Such are the dilemmas of those who hang around on the stage of power long after they should have exited. Greenspan, no doubt, wishes he had gotten out with Rubin when he could have exited with his reputation intact. Now the role of a "modern day John Law" awaits him in the history books.

Only the blind cannot see Scylla and Charybdis looming up ahead -- waiting to consume us. As Richard Russell so sagely puts it, "What the Fed and the US government have done is to build the greatest edifice of debt ever seen by one country in history. And this debt continues to build. For the US government, the debt build-up is continuing at the rate of over $13 billion a WEEK. The current rising trend in interest rates will bear down on this ocean of debt. This pits the forces of deflation directly against the forces of inflation.

"This impending battle of inflation vs. deflation is going to be one of the most critical economic confrontations seen in decades. Frankly, I don't know how it's going to turn out -- and neither does anyone else. In fact, I'd say 99 percent of the US population is unaware that it's even happening." [Dow Theory Letters, April 13, 2004]

Obviously to those of us who are aware of the impending battle, knowing which of these two scenarios awaits us would be most advantageous. Will America explode into hyperinflation, or will she collapse into all-consuming deflation? If that could be known, then one could direct his investments accordingly and reap considerable profit in the markets. If only he knew for sure.

In the long run, collapse of some kind is coming. That is the unavoidable nature of a boom-bust Keynesian economy. But which will come first, Scylla or Charybdis? The gamblers will try to predict and invest accordingly. The more conservative among us will opt for gold and cash as Russell urges.

The Two Greenspans

This writer is of the opinion that there are two different Greenspan personas presently competing inside his soul to win the acceptance of his mind. One of these personas would like to scamper out of Washington in June and leave the coming collapse to his successor, but he is torn over doing so. While he certainly worries over how best to help the American economy, my guess is that he anguishes far more over how it will look in the history books for him to abandon the sinking ship that he loaded with obscene debt. He is primarily concerned with what all political power lusters are concerned with -- how the future generations will view him.

I believe it is also quite possible that another persona lurks inside of Greenspan. This is the side of him that wants to believe he can avoid having to make the choice between Scylla and Charybdis. This is the side of him that thinks he can avoid deflation without having to print up helicopter money. This side of him whispers soothingly that he can actually steer the economic ship through to recovery with low interest rates and a moderate monetization of bonds and fiscal deficits. In this way, he can avoid being consumed by Scylla, the hyperinflation monster. And Charybdis, with its maelstrom of deflation, can also be avoided. He, Sir Alan, will become a sort of modern day Ulysses. He will go down in the history books as a great legendary hero. This side of him says that the Cassandras are wrong, that he does not have to choose between the two devastations. Hyperinflation is not the only way to avoid depression. If the power of the Fed is handled properly by a leader of great wisdom and skill, then the economic ship can navigate the dreadful Strait of Messina and come through unscathed.

Is this possible? Can one man at the helm of the Fed guide the American ship through to recovery and a healthy robust economy again without incurring a devastating meltdown of some nature? Anything is possible in the minds of the power-crazed. The socialists believed that billions of daily prices and productive decisions encompassing centuries could be manipulated by a group of planners behind their mahogany desks in the Politburo. So perhaps Greenspan believes that he too can manipulate the massive complexities of a market economy in its present peril.

I certainly don't believe such a thing is possible. I believe that we have worked ourselves into such a stupendous level of debt that there is now only one way to avoid the tragic whirlpool of deflation, and that is to start flying the helicopters over the hinterland with large crates of hundred dollar bills to disperse to the people. The only way out is to hyperinflate our way out, which, of course, is not really a way out. It is merely resigning oneself to picking Scylla instead of Charybdis. The Strait of Messina is now too narrow. The Kondratieff winter is upon us.

This is the horrible fate of countries that allow their governments to become centralized so as to manipulate the workings of the marketplace. Their prosperity, their freedom, and their stability become hostage to the egos of the leaders to whom they have given such power. And men in pursuit of power have mega-egos that have to be appeased. So America's fate, and with it the rest of the world's fate, hangs in the balance of a few highly flawed men vying for seats in black limousines and places in history books.

What the Greeks Can Teach Us

Homer's Odyssey presents us with a very salient lesson here. It was the Greek's belief that only men of great moral fiber could navigate the perilous seas of life without succumbing to the myriad temptations of power, wealth and sex, and thus plunging themselves and their country into repeated devastations. And even such high-minded men would succumb occasionally. Men, by nature, were possessed of far too many flaws in their makeup to be able to sail smoothly through life. But the Greeks also believed that when the Straits of Messina and their monstrous dangers do descend upon us, it is only the men like Ulysses who have a chance to make it through.

The tale of this Greek adventurer is an eternal classic and remains one of the great morality tales of humankind. Homer was the Greeks' Moses -- the first of their wise philosophers -- who spun a mesmerizing story of power lust, and greed, and glory, of beauty sought, riches found, and justice won. Homer taught his contemporaries about the damnable temptations that all men and women must confront as they journey through this world. He taught of the values that must be honored in order for life to be true. He taught of the heroic virtues that men must embrace in order for their souls to be sound. His tale is quite relevant down to our day, for we have our own morality tale unfolding right before us. While different in cultural specifics, it contains the same temptations of the spirit and dangers to the social fabric that the leaders of Homer's day had to confront.

How is all this to unfold? The answer lies in the fact that we crossed the Rubicon in 1971 when Richard Nixon closed the gold window. With that default, he sealed the fate of his country and doomed us today to a Kondratieff winter that will be the most devastating in history.

Which will appear first, inflation or deflation? My guess is that they will descend upon our debt-bloated ship in tandem. Scylla and Charybdis will be united in a long, grueling, ravaging, helter-skelter, debt-purging meltdown that will possibly last up to twenty years. We are four years into the meltdown at present.

The end of the world is not upon us, but the end of "our world as we know it" is. The only thing in doubt is what kind of society will we construct as we climb out of the maelstrom? Will the advocates of freedom prevail, or will the purveyors of statism overwhelm? Will Ulysses and his band make it back to Ithaca and bring a restoration of the free-market vision of Jefferson and Smith? Or will the New Orwellians usher in their hideous world government in answer to the economic nightmare that they themselves brought on with their greed and hubris? Stay tuned. The jury is still out, and we the people are part of that jury.


Nelson Hultberg
Americans for a Free Republic

Nelson Hultberg is a freelance writer in Dallas, Texas and the Executive Director of Americans for a Free Republic http://www.afr.org/. His articles have appeared in such publications as The Dallas Morning News, Insight, The Freeman, Liberty, and The Social Critic, as well as on numerous Internet sites. He is the author of Why We Must Abolish The Income Tax And The IRS (amazon.com), and he has a forthcoming book, Breaking the Demopublican Monopoly, to be released this summer.

A VOICE FROM NAZI GERMANY

A Survivor shows parallels between Naziism and trends in the U.S.

© 2004 by G. Edward Griffin

One of the most important realities of our time is that there is little difference between Communism, Naziism, Fascism, Fabianism, Socialism, and what is now being sold to the American people as Americanism. All of these systems are a single phenomenon. They are but variants of an ideology called collectivism. (For an analysis of collectivism, see The Chasm elsewhere in the Issues section of this site. This becomes crystal clear when one compares what is now unfolding in the United Sates with events that occurred in Nazi Germany. The parallels are chilling.

Several years ago, The Reality Zone released an audio presentation on this topic called Lesson from Austria, the personal testimony of Kitty Werthman who saw Hitler’s rise to power in her country. (Available at http://www.realityzone.com/audarvoliii.html ) Werthman reminds us that Hitler was eagerly welcomed by the Austrian people because the Nazis promised free health care, retirement income, unemployment benefits, guaranteed wages, free nursery care, equal rights for women, gun control to reduce crime, and other enticements that now are a part of the political scene in all countries.

Now, we have a powerful statement from another survivor of the Nazi system who shows the continuing parallels that have developed after 9-11, particularly the introduction of so-called homeland security and the glorification of war. The following testimony appeared as a letter to the editor at www.truthout.org dated January 9, 2004. My commentary is included at the end.

The Bush Hitler Thing

Dear Sir,

My family was one of Hitler’s victims. We lost a lot under the Nazi occupation, including an uncle who died in the camps and a cousin killed by a booby trap. I was terrified when my father went ballistic after finding my brother and me playing with a hand grenade. (I was only 12 at the time, and my brother insisted the grenade was safe.) I remember the rubble and the hardships of ‘austerity’ - and the bomb craters from Allied bombs. As late as the 1980s, I had to take detours while bombs were being removed - they litter the countryside, buried under parking lots, buildings, and in the canals and rivers to this day. Believe me, I learned a lot about Hitler while I was growing up, both in Europe and here in the US - both my parents were in the war and talked about it constantly, unlike most American families. I spent my earliest years with the second-hand fear that trickled down from their PTSD - undiagnosed and untreated in those days.

I’m no expert on WWII - but I learned a lot about what happened in Germany - and Europe - back in those days. I always wondered how the wonderful German people - so honest, decent, hard-working, friendly, and generous - could ever allow such a thing to happen. (There were camps near my family’s home - they still talk about them only in hushed conspiratorial whispers.) I asked a lot of questions - we were only a few kilometers from the German border - and no one ever denied me. My relatives had obviously spent a lot of time thinking about the war - they still haven’t forgotten - I don’t think anyone can forget such a horrible nightmare. Among the questions I asked:

Why didn’t you do anything about the people in the camps?

Everyone was terrified. People “disappeared” into those camps. Sometimes the Nazis came and lined everyone up, walking behind them - even school children - with a cocked pistol. You never knew when they would just shoot someone in the back of the head. Everyone was terrified. Everyone was disarmed - guns were registered, so all the Nazis had to do was go from house to house and demand the guns.

Didn’t you see what was happening?

We saw. There was nothing we could do. Our military had no modern weapons. The Nazis had technology and resources - they just invaded and took over - we were overwhelmed by their air power. They had spies everywhere - people spying on each other, just to have an ‘ace in the hole’ in case they were accused - and anyone who had a grudge against you could accuse you of something - just an accusation meant you’d disappear. Nobody dared ask where you had gone - anyone who returned was considered suspicious - what had they said, and who did they implicate? It was a climate of fear - there’s nothing anyone can do when the government uses fear and imprisonment to intimidate people. The government was above the law - even in Germany, it became “every man for himself.” Advancement was possible by exposing “traitors” - anyone who questioned the government. It didn’t matter if the people you accused were guilty or not - just the accusation was enough.

Did anyone know what was going on?

We all knew. We imagined the worst because the Nazis made ‘examples’ of a few people in every town and village. Public torture and execution. The most unspeakable atrocities were committed in full view of everyone. If this is what happened in public, can you imagine what might be going on in the camps? Nobody wanted to know.

Why didn’t the German people stop the Nazis?

Life was better, at first, under the Nazis. The war machine invigorated the economy - men had jobs again, and enough money to take care of their family. New building projects were everywhere. The shops were full again - and people could afford good food, culture, and luxuries. Women could stay home in comfort. Crime was reduced. Health care improved. It was a rosy scenario - Hitler brought order and prosperity. His policies won widespread approval because life was better for most Germans, after the misery of reparations and inflation. The people liked the idea of removing the worst elements of society - the gypsies, the homosexuals, the petty criminals - it was easy to elicit support for prosecuting the corrupt, “evil” people poisoning society. Every family was proud of their hometown heroes - the sharply-dressed soldiers they contributed to his program - they were, after all, defending the Fatherland. Continuing a proud tradition that had been defeated and shamed after WWI, the soldiers gave the feeling of power and success to the proud families that showered them with praise and support. Their early victories were reason to celebrate - in spite of the fact that they faced poorly armed inferior forces - further proof that what they were doing was right, and the best thing for the country. The news was full of stories about their bravery and accomplishments against a vile enemy. They were “liberating” these countries from their corrupt governments.

These are some of the answers I gleaned over the years. As a child, I was fascinated with the Nazis. I thought the German soldiers were really something - that’s how strong an impression they made, even after the war. After all, they weren’t the ones committing war crimes - they were the pride of their families and communities. It was just the SS and Gestapo that were “bad.” Now I know better - but that pride in the military was a strong factor for many years, only adding to the mystique of military power - after all, my father had been a soldier too, but in the American army. It took a while to figure out the truth.

Every time I’ve gone back to Europe, someone has taken me to the “gardens of stone” - the Allied cemeteries that dot the countryside. With great sadness, my relatives would stand in abject misery, remembering the nightmare, and asking “Why?” Maybe that’s why they wouldn’t support the US invasion of Iraq. They knew war. They knew occupation. And they knew resistance. I saw the building where British flyers hid on their way back to England - smuggled out by brave families that risked the lives of everyone to help the Allies. As a child, I had played in a basement where the cow lived under the house, as is common there. The same place those flyers hid.

So why, now, when I hear GWB’s speeches, do I think of Hitler? Why have I drawn a parallel between the Nazis and the present administration? Just one small reason - the phrase “Never forget.” Never let this happen again. It is better to question our government - because it really can happen here - than to ignore the possibility.

So far, I’ve seen nothing to eliminate the possibility that Bush is on the same course as Hitler. And I’ve seen far too many analogies to dismiss the possibility. The propaganda. The lies. The rhetoric. The nationalism. The flag waving. The pretext of “preventive war.” The flaunting of international law and international standards of justice. The disappearances of “undesirable” aliens. The threats against protesters. The invasion of a non-threatening sovereign nation. The occupation of a hostile country. The promises of prosperity and security. The spying on ordinary citizens. The incitement to spy on one’s neighbors - and report them to the government. The arrogant triumphant pride in military conquest. The honoring of soldiers. The tributes to “fallen warriors.” The diversion of money to the military. The demonization of government appointed “enemies.” The establishment of “Homeland Security.” The dehumanization of “foreigners.” The total lack of interest in the victims of government policy. The incarceration of the poor and mentally ill. The growing prosperity from military ventures. The illusion of “goodness” and primacy. The new einsatzgrupen forces. Assassination teams. Closed extralegal internment camps. The militarization of domestic police. Media blackout of non-approved issues. Blacklisting of protesters - including the no-fly lists and photographing dissenters at rallies.

There isn’t much doubt in my mind - anyone who compares the history of Hitler’s rise to power and the progression of recent events in the US cannot avoid the parallels. It’s incontrovertible. Is Bush another Hitler? Maybe not, but with each incriminating event, the parallel grows - it certainly cannot be dismissed. There’s too much evidence already. Just as Hitler used American tactics to plan and execute his reign, it looks as if Karl Rove is reading Hitler’s playbook to plan world domination - and that is the stated intent of both. From the Reichstag fire to the landing at Nuremberg to the motto of “Gott Mit Uns” [God is with us] to the unprovoked invasion and occupation of Iraq to the insistence that peace was the ultimate goal, the line is unbroken and unwavering.

I’m afraid now, that what may still come to pass is a reign far more savage and barbaric than that of the Nazis. Already, appeasement has been fruitless - it only encourages the brazen to escalate their arrogance and braggadocio. Americans support Bush - by a generous majority - and mass media sings his praises while indicting his detractors - or silencing their opinions completely. The American people seem to care only about the domestic economic situation - and even in that, they are in complete denial. They don’t want to hear about Iraq, and Afghanistan is already forgotten. Even the Democratic opposition supports the occupation of Iraq. Everyone seems to agree that Saddam Hussein deserves to be executed - with or without a trial. “Visitors” are fingerprinted. Guilty until proven innocent. Snipers are on New York City rooftops. When do the Stryker teams start appearing on American streets? They’re perfectly suited for “Homeland Security” - and they’ve had a trial run in Iraq. The Constitution has been suspended - until further notice. Dick Cheney just mentioned it may be for decades - even a generation, as Rice asserts as well. Is this the start of the 1000 year reign of this new collection of thugs? So it would seem. I can only hope that in the coming year there will be some sign - some hint - that we are not becoming that which we abhor. The Theory of the Grotesque fares all too well these days. It may not be Nazi Germany - it might be a lot worse.

SL | Wisconsin


Commentary by G. Edward Griffin

As we approach the 2004 presidential election, there is an increasing crescendo of anti-Bush sentiment that appears to be motivated, not by concern over the loss of our freedom, but by a revulsion against our war in Iraq and a partisan drive to replace a Republican president with a Democrat. It is an age-old ploy: Focus on the evils of the leader and hope that people will not look too carefully at the man who is preparing to replace him. In this case, the Democratic hopeful, Mr. John Kerry, is a card-carrying collectivist exactly like Mr George W. Bush, but the voters are not supposed to think about that. They are expected to be so alarmed over the performance of the Bush Administration in Iraq that they will be blinded to the fact that, for decades, both political parties have followed exactly the same long-range agenda. It is to expand government at home and to merge the U.S into a so-called New World Order based on the model of collectivism. Voters are led to believe that, by choosing between the Democratic and Republican parties, they have a choice. They actually think they are participating in their own political destiny; but that is an illusion. To a collectivist theoretician like Professor Carroll Quigley [President Clinton’s former teacher at Georgetown University], it is a necessary illusion to prevent voters from meddling into the important affairs of state. If you have ever wondered why the two American parties appear so different at election time but not so different afterward, listen carefully to Quigley’s approving overview of American politics:

The National parties and their presidential candidates, with the Eastern Establishment assiduously fostering the process behind the scenes, moved closer together and nearly met in the center with almost identical candidates and platforms, although the process was concealed as much as possible, by the revival of obsolescent or meaningless war cries and slogans (often going back to the Civil War). … The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can ”throw the rascals out" at any election without leading to any profound or extreme shifts in policy. … Either party in office becomes in time corrupt, tired, unenterprising, and vigorless. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies. [Taken from Tragedy and Hope, by Carroll Quigley, pp. 1247-1248. Available at http://www.realityzone.com/tragedy.html


We must understand this perspective when appraising the parallels between Naziism and the ideology that now is embraced by most government leaders in the Western world. It has nothing to do with individual leaders, their campaign rhetoric, or their personal style. Collectivism is the culprit, and we will not recapture our freedom by merely switching back and forth between candidates selected by political parties all of which are dedicated to collectivism. We must have leaders who will stand against collectivism in all its forms and who will declare for individualism, as summarized in The Creed of Freedom. (See The Creed of Freedom elsewhere on this site.)


G. Edward Griffin

April 25, 2004

Perle at the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations

by Juan Cole

It was quite an experience to be on the same panel on Tuesday with Richard Perle and Toby Dodge, before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Perle wasn't added until the last minute, and it is mysterious why he was there, since ours was supposed to be an "expert" panel. Dodge has an important book on Iraq. Originally Ahmad Hashim was going to be on with us (he came Wednesday instead), and then we heard Perle had been put on. Perle, of course, is no Iraq expert. He doesn't know a word of Arabic, and has never lived anywhere in the Arab world.

Perle's entire testimony was a camouflaged piece of flakking for Ahmad Chalabi. He complained that the State Department and the CIA had not created a private army for Chalabi and had not cooperated with him. Perle did not mention Chalabi's name, but it was clear that was who he was talking about (State and CIA famously dropped Chalabi in the mid-1990s when they asked him to account for the millions they had given him, and he could not).

In fact, Perle kept talking about "the Iraqis" when it was clear he meant Chalabi. He said the US should have turned power over to "the Iraqis" long before now.

But here's an interesting contradiction. I said at one point that I thought Bremer should have acquiesced in Grand Ayatollah Sistani's request for open elections to be held this spring, and that if they had been, it might have forestalled the recent blow-up. I had in mind that Muqtada al-Sadr in particular would have been kept busy acting as a ward boss, trying to get his guys returned from East Baghdad & Kufa, etc.

Perle became alarmed and said that scheduling early elections would not have prevented the "flare-up" because the people who mounted it were enemies of freedom and uninterested in elections. Perle has this bizarre black and white view of the world and demonizes people right and left. A lot of the Mahdi Army young men who fought for Muqtada are just neighborhood youth, unemployed and despairing. Some are fanatics, but most of them don't hate freedom-- most of them have no idea what it is, having never experienced democracy.

But anyway, what struck me was the contradiction between Perle's insistence that the US should have handed power over to Iraqis months ago, and his simultaneous opposition to free and fair elections. The only conclusion I can draw is that he wants power handed to Chalabi, who would then be a kind of dictator and would not go to the polls any time soon.

Perle also at one point said he didn't think the events of the first two weeks of April were a "mass uprising" and said he thought Fallujah was quiet now. (Nope).

It is indicative of the Alice in Wonderland world in which these Washington Think Tank operators live that Perle could make such an obviously false observation with a straight face. Even a child who has been watching CNN for the past three weeks would know that there was a mass uprising. (Even ten percent of the American-trained police switched sides and joined the opposition, and 40% of Iraqi security men refused to show up to fight the insurgents.)

I replied, pointing out that the US had lost control of most of Baghdad, its supply and communications lines to the south were cut, and a ragtag band of militiamen in Kut chased the Ukrainian troops off their base and occupied it. It was an uprising. I suppose Perle hopes that if he says it wasn't an uprising, at least some people who aren't paying attention will believe him. It is bizarre.

It reminded me of the scene in Ladykillers where the fraudsters set off an explosion in a lady's basement, and she hears it while outside in a car, and is alarmed, and the Tom Hanks character says in a honeyed southern accent, "Why, Ah don't believe Ah heard anything at all." I could just see Perle in a Panama hat at that point playing the character.

It is deeply shameful that Perle is still pushing Chalabi, and may well succeed in installing him. Chalabi is wanted for embezzling $300 million from a Jordanian bank. He cannot account for millions of US government money given him from 1992 to 1996. He was flown into Iraq by the Pentagon (Perle was on the Defense Advisory Board, a civilian oversight committee for the Pentagon) with a thousand of his militiamen. The US military handed over to Chalabi, a private citizen, the Baath intelligence files that showed who had been taking money from Saddam, giving Chalabi the ability to blackmail large numbers of Iraqi and regional actors. It was Chalabi who insisted that the Iraqi army be disbanded, and Perle almost certainly was an intermediary for that stupid decision. It was Chalabi who insisted on blacklisting virtually all Baath Party members, even if they had been guilty of no crimes, effectively marginalizing all the Sunni Iraqi technocrats who could compete with him for power. It was Chalabi who finagled his way onto the Interim Governing Council even though he has no grassroots support (only 0.2 percent of Iraqis say they trust him).

Now Chalabi's nephew Salem has been put in charge of the trial of Saddam Hussein. Salem is a partner in Zell and Feith, a Jerusalem-based law firm headed by a West Bank settler, in which Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of Defense for Planning, is also a senior partner when not in the US government. You can be assured that the trial will be conducted on behalf of the Bush administration and the Neocons, and on behalf of the Chalabis. Since the Chalabis have been trying to overthrow Saddam for decades, it is hard to see how this can have even the appearance of an impartial tribunal.

Anyway, Perle was just a one-note Johnny, with his whole message being "We must give away Iraq to Ahmad Chalabi yesterday! That will solve all the problems."

If the Bush administration listens to Perle and puts Chalabi in as a soft dictator, it will be the final nail in the coffin of the Iraq enterprise. The whole thing is already going very badly wrong. Chalabi will play iceberg to the Iraq/Bush Titanic.

It would be really interesting to know the list of secret promises Chalabi has given Perle (and presumably the Israelis through Perle) that would explain this Neocon fervor for the man.

By the way, that Jordanian bank that Chalabi embezzled from in the 1980s? There has been speculation that he was using it to launder Iranian money for the Khomeini war effort against Saddam. So perhaps from his point of view, he hadn't so much embezzled $300 million at the end, but rather collected his retainer from Tehran.

Since Perle was the source of most of the rotten advice that got the US into its current quagmire in Iraq, and since he was forced to resign as chairman of the Defense Advisory Board under a cloud of scandal, it was doubly inappropriate for him to be testifying before the Senate about what to do in Iraq.

posted by Juan Cole at 4/22/2004 08:47:43 AM http://www.juancole.com

Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

Israel’s ‘Wall’ Imprisons Christians

By James P. Tucker Jr.

Christians—especially Catholics—should be outraged that Israel’s wall is sealing off holy sites. The issue emerged in a March 25 letter protesting the wall to Secretary of State Colin Powell from Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill), chairman of the House International Relations Committee. Hyde also is a devout Roman Catholic and a fierce advocate of support for Israel.

Hyde asked Powell to help persuade Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to change the wall’s planned path that would block the scriptural pathway of Jesus Christ from Christians.

“I fear that important religious sites will become museums for commercial purposes and will no longer be maintained as places of spiritual worship shared by billions across the world,” Hyde wrote. He asked Powell’s help to “ensure that the Stations of the Cross are not cut off from each other, preventing the normal celebrations of Easter and the commemoration of the last days of Christ.”

The Bush administration has leverage, approving of $10 billion in annual giveaways while imposing no effective
restraints on Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian lands. But does Bush have the courage?

Sharon’s government cut off negotiations about the wall with the Vatican. Catholic clergy and laity inspecting the
deplorable conditions of Christians in the Holy Land found the Israeli military and bureaucracy uncooperative, even
hostile.

Catholics first visited Hyde last year about the wall, now being built, that will seal off vast portions of Palestinian lands in the West Bank and Jordan, greatly expanding Israel’s borders. The meandering wall—the portion now built and the path it is to take to completion—reaches out to grab Palestinian orchards, vineyards and water sources.

Hyde had advised Catholic leaders to obtain proof about the threat to access to holy sites. A delegation headed by the Rev. Donald Rooney of Fredericksburg, Va., and the Rev. John Podsiadlo of Baltimore did so. They returned to Hyde with photographs taken over the objections of Israeli soldiers.

“If we do not turn the tide of events,” Rooney and Podsiadlo wrote on their return, “Christian charity, sacred sites and the living Christian community in the Holy Land will be destroyed.” The wall, they said, “could forever change the Holy Land and the people who live in and visit this cherished historic land.”

In his letter, Hyde laid out the problem. A concrete wall will completely enclose the last passage from Bethany to the
Mount of Olives, restricting the Palm Sunday procession from Bethpage into Jerusalem. Access will be blocked to the
Sisters of Emmanuel Monastery north of Bethlehem. The proposed route of the wall separates the convent and school
of the Rosary Sisters.

The Vatican charges that Israel has violated a 1993 agreement between Rome and Israel guaranteeing access to West
Bank land owned by the Catholic Church. Sharon has refused to keep this promise, say Vatican officials, and abruptly ended negotiations on Aug. 28.

Sharon’s Scheme: Make Peace Impossible

by Charley Reese

The murder of Hamas’ spiritual leader, Sheik Yassin, makes perfect sense as long as you understand Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s strategy. That strategy is to make peace impossible.

For three years, Sharon has done everything to prevent peace. He himself provoked the new uprising, re-invaded the occupied territories, destroyed the Palestinian Authority, forced Yasser Arafat into house arrest and launched an unprecedented, brutal campaign of assassinations, curfews, fences, destruction of property and random killing of Palestinians. The Israelis have killed about 2,700 Palestinians in the past three years. Only about 700 Israelis have been killed.

At the same time, Sharon has refused all offers to negotiate, and whenever the Palestinians arranged a cease-fire on their side, Sharon broke it with a provocative raid or assassination. No other rogue state or rogue leader would have been allowed to get away with such behavior, but Israel has the U.S. government in its pocket. That’s the answer to the question posed by the French ambassador to Great Britain as to why the world allows “this (expletive deleted) little country to cause the world so much trouble.”

Sharon doesn’t want peace, because he knows that any peace settlement would involve returning nearly all of the occupied territories to the Palestinians. Israel’s goal has always been Palestine without Palestinians. He is greatly afraid that the world will lose patience and impose a settlement on Israel. Hence, his strategy is to make peace impossible so that he can impose unilaterally his own settlement —a settlement, of course, that will condemn the Palestinians to unlivable conditions.

Now, that’s all well and good if you are an Israeli and don’t mind condemning future generations to perpetual conflict, but what about Americans? This is, after all, not legitimately our conflict. I’ve traveled in Palestine and the Middle East, and while it’s interesting, it’s not high on my list of vacation spots. We would be much better off if the only Americans who ever went there were the crews of oil tankers.

Unfortunately, our politicians, by cravenly obeying the wishes of Israel and its powerful U.S. lobby, have made us a part of the conflict. We’ve already paid in blood and treasure. Anybody who doesn’t understand that the attack on 9/11 was directly related to the Palestinian and Israeli conflict hasn’t been paying attention.

The Arab world sees us — correctly — as an accessory before and after the fact to all the crimes Israel commits against the Palestinians and other Arabs in the area. We cannot load Israel down with modern weapons, with gifts of more than $90 billion of American tax dollars, with absolute protection from all attempts to hold it accountable under international law, and then pretend we are innocent. We are guilty by proxy of murder, land theft, destruction of property and all the other human misery that Israel has caused in the region.

So, if you’re one of those rah-rah Israel First supporters, don’t complain when the terrorists come looking for you. You’ve allowed your politicians to enlist you in somebody else’s war, and in war there are always casualties on both sides.

America has become a nation of pathological irresponsibility. Nobody wants to take responsibility for his or her own actions, which is the basic cause of the litigation flood. Least of all do American politicians wish to do so. They would rather heap on the manure that the terrorism directed at us has nothing whatsoever to do with the policies they have followed for the past 30 years or more. In truth, it has everything to do with those policies.

So, if you or your loved ones get bloodied by terrorists, then blame your Christian Zionists, your Israel First crowd and your corrupt politicians who have their tongues in the ears and their hands in the pockets of the Israeli lobby.

© 2004 BY KING FEATURES SYNDICATE, INC.

The following article is from the blog of Juan Cole, Juan Cole * Informed Comment *
http://www.juancole.com/

Cole Testimony at Senate Foreign Relations Committee, April 20

US Mistakes in Iraq

by Juan Cole

Testimony before Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, April 20, 2004

This brief addresses three areas. First, what mistakes have been made in the Coalition administration of Iraq, and why? Second, what is the current situation? Third, what steps can be taken to ensure the emergence of a stable and democratic Iraq?

Mistakes

The biggest US failure in Iraq to date lay in American inability to understand the workings of Iraqi society. Many US administrators and military commanders appeared to believe that once the Baathist state of Saddam Hussein was overthrown, they would be dealing with an Iraqi society that was docile, grateful and virtually a blank slate on which US goals could be imprinted.

In fact, Baathist Iraq was a pressure-cooker, consisting of a highly mobilized, urban and relatively literate population that had organized clandestinely to oppose the weak and ramshackle Baath state. Although the clan-based political parties and militias of the Kurds in the north were well known because they had emerged as autonomous under the US no-fly zone, similar phenomena in the Sunni Arab center and the Shiite south were obscured by the information black-out of Baath party censorship. In al-Anbar Province, lying on the road between Amman and Baghdad, local populations came under the influence of Salafi or Sunni fundamentalist movements and ideas that were also growing popular in Jordan. In the late Saddam period, the secular Baathist state allowed more manifestations of Sunni religiosity than it had earlier, allowing these groups to establish beachheads in Fallujah, Ramadi and elsewhere.

Many books and articles were published in Arabic in the 1990s, that should have made clear that the Shiite south in particular was a lively arena of contention between the Baath military and the religious parties and their militias, some with bases in Iran to which they could withdraw. Shiite guerrillas in the south, springing from the clandestine al-Da‘wa Party, Iraqi Hizbullah, Sadrists, or Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, conducted bombings, raids, assassinations and other acts of defiance against the Baath, often sheltering in the swamps of the south or retreating, if pursued, to Iranian territory. The followers of Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr (d. 1999) in particular were militantly anti-Baath, anti-American and anti-Israel, and aspired to an Islamic state in Iraq on the Iranian model. Given the US role in calling for, and then allowing the crushing of, the Shiite uprising of spring, 1991, after the Gulf War, the idea that Shiite Iraqis would be "grateful" to the United States and now willing to forgive altogether that earlier betrayal, was fanciful. Moreover, US officials appeared to be ignorant of the important role of Iran in Iraqi Shiite politics, a role that goes back to 1501, and kept talking about the need of Iran to avoid "interfering" in Iraq (which is rather like telling the Vatican to stop interfering in Ireland). In addition to dissident groups, figures existed within Iraqi society like Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who have enormous moral authority, about which American administrators were ignorant or skeptical into winter, 2004, to their peril.

These covert political parties and clandestine guerrilla groups were curbed by the Baath secret police and by the Fidayee Saddam. What the Americans did in March and April of 2003 was to remove that apparatus of repression, and allow the religious parties and militias freely to organize, canvass for new members, and spread their ideas and structures freely throughout the country. The Salafi Sunnis and the various Shiite religious parties had a vision of post-Baath Iraq, for which they had been planning for over a decade, that differed starkly from United States goals in Iraq. But because the US was unable to assemble in post-war Iraq anything like the 500,000 troops it had had in the first Gulf War, it and its Coalition allies often were forced actively to depend on the good will and even the security-providing abilities of the religious militias in the post-war period.

Although the US did wisely choose to attempt to incorporate some grass-roots Iraqi political organizations into the Interim Provisional Government, it excluded others. Thus, the London branch of the Shiite al-Dawa Party was given a seat, but the Tehran branch was not (both groups had come back to Iraq after the fall of Saddam, linking back up with local party members who had remained and organized covertly). The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which had a Badr Corps militia of perhaps 15,000 trained men, was given a seat, but the Sadrist organization was not. The Islamic Party of Iraq, a Muslim Brotherhood-derived party from Mosul, was given a seat, but the Salafis of al-Anbar Province were excluded. Of course, some of the excluded groups were hostile to the US occupation, and might have refused to serve, but it is likely that some representative of those tendencies could have been found who would serve. Worse, the US gave special perquisites and extra power to a handful of expatriate politicians with whom it had cut backroom deals. These expatriate politicians had often been involved in scandals, had no grassroots inside the country, and were widely disliked. Many Iraqis feared that the US would shoehorn these expatriates into power as a sort of new soft dictatorship, and that they would betray Iraqi national interests in preference to personal and American ones for years to come.

One strategy that might have forestalled a lot of opposition would have been to hold early municipal elections. Such free and fair elections were actually scheduled in cities like Najaf by local US military authorities in spring of 2003, but Paul Bremer stepped in to cancel them. A raft of newly elected mayors who subsequently gained experience in domestic politics might have thrown up new leaders in Iraq who could then move to the national stage. This development appears to have been deliberately forestalled by Mr. Bremer, in favor of a kind of cronyism that aimed at putting a preselected group of politicians in power. In Najaf, the US appointed a Sunni Baathist officer as mayor over this devotedly Shiite city. He had turned on Saddam only at the last moment. Since Sunni Baathists had massacred the people of Najaf, he was extremely unpopular. He took the children of Najaf notables hostage for ransom and engaged in other corrupt practices. Eventually even the US authorities had to remove him from power and try him. But the first impression the US made on the holy city of Najaf, and therefore on the high Shiite clerics such as Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, was very bad.

The United States made a key strategic error in declining to post enough US troops to Iraq in the post-war period to establish good security. A country the size of Iraq probably required 400,000 to 500,000 troops to keep it orderly in the wake of the collapse of the state. The US compounded that error by dissolving the Iraqi army altogether, which deprived the US of informed potential allies in restoring security, created enormous discontent among the 400,000 men fired, and provided a recruitment pool to religious militias seeking to expand. The US also failed to send in enough experienced, Arabic-speaking civil administrators at the Coalition Provisional Authority. The CPA, with only a thousand employees for much of the post-war period, most of whom could not speak the local language and did not understand local customs, much reduced its own effectiveness by remaining relatively insular and cut off from Iraqi society. The lack of security ensuing from the thinness of the military force on the ground increased the danger to CPA employees and reinforced this insularity. There has been no transparency in US decision-making in Iraq, so that we do not, and the Iraqi people do not know why these steps, so injurious to the common good, were taken.

The security situation in post-Baath Iraq has not been good in much of the country, though the Shiite south was for a long time somewhat quieter than the centernorth.

The problem area encompassed Baghdad, Samarra, Baqubah (and Diyalah province more generally), Mosul, Kirkuk, and al-Anbar Province (Fallujah, Ramadi, Habbaniyah). Nevertheless, guerrillas did mount significant attacks occasionally in the south, as with the huge August 29 truck bombing at Najaf, and in the far north, as with the bombing at Irbil in January. These bombings targeted highly charged political and religious symbols and greatly undermined Iraqi confidence in the ability of the US to provide security. Coalition troops routinely came under fire in the South, though not nearly with as much frequency as in the center-north. The US official and press tendency to speak of the problems as having concerned a relatively small portion of the country, mistakenly termed the "Sunni triangle," obscured the scope and seriousness of a security collapse that encompassed perhaps half of the geographical area of Iraq and affected a good third of its population on an ongoing basis and at least half at some point.

Even in the quieter areas, they were quiet for all the wrong reasons. In the north, the Kurdish peshmerga or paramilitary fighters provided much of what urban security there was, and they had come to dominate the police in multi-ethnic, oil-rich Kirkuk. These paramilitary fighters constituted a law unto themselves and Kurdish leaders vowed that Federal Iraqi troops would never again set foot on Kurdish soil. In the Shiite south, Coalition forces were spread exceedingly thin and were staffed by inexperienced troops from countries like Bulgaria and the Ukraine, who had no local knowledge and who had apparently been assured that they would not be involved in warfare but rather in peacekeeping. Local townspeople tended to turn to Shiite militiamen to police neighborhoods, according to press reports, in places like Samawah, and even in large urban neighborhoods in East Baghdad and Basra.

Although hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on reconstruction, and there have been some genuine successes, as with the restoration of electricity, the poor security situation has detracted from those successes in the minds of most Iraqis. Moreover, the successes have been partial and often unsatisfactory. Hospitals are open, but often strapped for cash and lacking in equipment, medicine and personnel. Electricity provision before the war was highly inadequate, so returning to pre-war levels does not solve the problem. The preference for American and British contractors has often cut Iraqi businesses out of the lucrative contracts, except at lower bid levels, which in turn has prevented the US from making a big dent in massive unemployment rates. The massive unemployment in turn has contributed to poor security, in a vicious circle.

The Current Problems

The US administration of Iraq has suffered from lack of consistency, from infighting among major bureaucratic organizations such as the Department of Defense and the State Department, and from an apparent desire strongly to shape Iraqi society in certain directions, which has the effect of contravening international law on military occupations, specifically the Hague Regulations of 1907 and the Geneva Conventions of 1949. One example is the determination to impose on the Iraqi economy the kind of shock therapy or very rapid liberalization tried in Russia, with disastrous results. It is one thing for a sovereign Iraqi government to ask for help in liberalizing the economy, it is another for an American civil administrator to take such a decision by fiat. American announcements on economic policy have often been opposed by local Iraqi merchants and entrepreneurs, by the Iraqi-American Chamber of Commerce, and even by the American-appointed Interim Governing Council itself.

The US has gone through four major plans for Iraqi governance and it is unclear as of this writing to whom sovereignty will be handed on June 30. Jay Garner, the first civil administrator, planned to hold a national congress in July, 2003, and then to hand over Iraq to the resulting government by October of that year. He was replaced by Paul Bremer, who initially planned to run Iraq himself by fiat for two or three years. He was unable to do so, and then appointed an Interim Governing Council which, however, suffered problems of legitimacy insofar as it was a committee of a foreign occupying power. On November 15 Mr. Bremer made a 180 degree turn and announced councilbased elections for spring of 2004 and a turn-over of sovereignty to the resulting government. Those elections were deemed undemocratic by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, and were not held, leaving Bremer with a turn-over date but not a government to turn over to. Most Iraqis, who have yet to experience anything like democracy in the post-Baath period, are confused and suspicious at these high-handed and frankly somewhat dictatorial proceedings.

The US has faced serious opposition from Iraqi paramilitaries in al-Anbar province and elsewhere, and has sometimes even clashed with the Kurdish Peshmerga. In late March and early April, it came into severe conflict with Sunni tribesmen in Fallujah and with the Army of the Mahdi, a Shiite militia in East Baghdad and the southern Shiite cities, led by Muqtada al-Sadr. Both conflicts were initially mishandled. The US military responded to the killing of four American civilian security guards, and the desecration of their bodies, by surrounding, besieging, and bombarding the entire town of Fallujah. While it was a hotbed of guerrilla activity, the entire town was not implicated in that activity. Many observers, including the former president of the Interim Governing Council Adnan Pachachi, and United Nations special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, have accused the US military of engaging in collective punishment of Fallujans and of failing to take due account of the need to avoid civilian casualties.

While Fallujah was poorly handled from a political point of view, the crisis grew out of an attack on US citizens. In contrast, the decision to go after Muqtada al-Sadr was wholly elective. His movement had been militant since the days of Saddam, and it is true that he was organizing a militia. But he had repeatedly instructed his people to avoid clashing with US troops, and seems mainly to have been organizing for the future. Measures could have been taken to forbid his militiamen from training or appearing in uniform in public. But by attempting to arrest his key aides, the Coalition Provisional Authority telegraphed to him its determination to arrest and imprison him. Muqtada had seen his father killed after similar warnings from Saddam, and reacted by launching an insurgency throughout the south, making the point that he would not go quietly. The CPA grossly underestimated the organizational capacity of his movement. It was able to expel Iraqi police from their stations in many places in the south, and in some instances Iraqi police and military either declined to fight the Army of the Mahdi or even switched sides and joined it. The US military gave up on trying to maintain a presence in East Baghdad. Ukrainian troops were chased off their base at Kut, and Nasiriyah fell to the Sadrists, as did Kufa, Najaf, and parts of Karbala. While the US and its allies were able to contain and then roll back this insurrection, it demonstrated that the Coalition did not really control Iraq, and was only there on the sufferance of powerful social forces that could effectively challenge it when they so chose.

What Needs to Be Done

In order to defuse the violence, the US military needs to adopt a much more narrow and targeted approach to dealing with guerrillas, and stop "using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut" (in the words of a British officer in Basra). US troops have repeatedly used disproportionate force to reply to guerrilla attacks, and in the process have created new guerrillas by harming innocent civilians. The tactics used at Fallujah have been seen by most Iraqis, and indeed, by many Coalition partners and Interim Governing Council members, as an outrage and a direct flaunting of the Geneva Conventions governing military occupations. Even the ordinary search and find missions conducted in al-Anbar province and elsewhere have often involved male troops invading the private homes of Iraqis, going into the womens’ quarters, and visiting humiliation on tribesmen for whom protecting their women is the basis of their honor. Unless these operations are yielding consistently excellent intelligence and results, they should be curtailed. The Coalition Provisional Authority must cease attempting to "take out" dissident leaders like Muqtada al-Sadr before the hand-over of sovereignty. It was precisely the attempt to cut Muhammad Aidid out of the political process in Somalia that caused the Mogadishu disaster. The US will simply have to accept that there are political forces on the ground in Iraq that it views as undesirable. It cannot dictate Iraqi politics to Iraqis without becoming a frankly colonial power. If it does become a mere colonist in Iraq, it will be mired in the country for decades and be forced to spend hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of servicemen’s lives on the endeavor. Rather, it must draw those less savory political forces in Iraq into parliamentary politics so that they can learn to rework their goals and conflicts in the terms of democratic procedure. Groups like the Sadrists cannot hope to dominate parliament, and so must learn to trade horses to get part of what they want.

The main problem for the United States in Iraq is a lack of popular legitimacy. Neither the Coalition Provisional Authority nor the Interim Governing Council has much popular support, with a few exceptions. Neither grew out of any Iraqi democratic process, and neither was formed with significant involvement of the United Nations Security Council, which even Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has said he respects. In a recent poll, about half of Iraqis felt that the US invasion had been a humiliation, and the other half felt it had been a liberation. Even those who felt liberated, however, are impatient for a government they can call their own.

The US must now move with all due deliberation to holding free and fair, oneperson, one-vote elections in Iraq. Only such a process holds any hope of deflecting faction-fighting into more a more peaceful reworking of political conflict into parliamentary processes. The elections should be held even if the security situation remains poor. Indian and other elections in the global south are often attended by public disturbances and even loss of life, but they nevertheless produce legitimate governments. The recently-released Brahimi plan should be adopted, as President Bush has indicated. It calls for the dissolution of the Interim Governing Council on June 30, for the temporary appointment, under United Nations and Coalition auspices, of a handful of high government officials (a president, two vice presidents and a prime minister) who would form a limited, caretaker government to oversee the transition to elections this winter. It also provides from the election of a broad advisory council that would represent a broader range of Iraqi actors than did the old Interim Governing Council. For the legitimacy of the new government, it is absolutely essential that the United Nations Security Council be deeply involved in its formation and in authorizing it. Indeed, the very presence of US troops and other Coalition troops in Iraq beyond June 30 must be authorized by a new United Nations Security Council resolution if their mission is to remain legal in the bounds of international law.

In the interim, militias should be curbed at the local level and where possible integrated into the Iraqi military. Emphasis should not be placed on attacking the top leaders of the militias, but on dealing with the phenomenon. The pace of the formation of the new military, and the amount of money spent on it, must increase rapidly. This approach would reduce unemployment, reduce the recruitment pool for militias, and provide forces that could help with at least local security.

The giving of reconstruction bids has been structured so that all small bids of $50,000 or less automatically go to Iraqi firms. This ceiling should be raised, to ensure that more Iraqis are involved in reconstruction and more local jobs created. Shipping the money back to the US by employing mainly American firms will not greatly benefit Iraq or address the deep unemployment problems there.

As it is phased out, the Coalition Provisional Authority must reach out to all sections of the Iraqi public to reassure them that they will not be crushed by a new tyranny of the majority, or looted by a handful of cronies of America. The Sadrists in East Baghdad, Kufa and elsewhere must be convinced that they can best exercise their influence by becoming ward bosses and electing their delegates to parliament. Attempting to exclude the Sadrists will only ensure that they remain violent. They should be encouraged to do what the Shiite Amal Party did in Lebanon, trading in its militias for a prominent role in the Lebanese parliament. The Sunni Arabs of Anbar province must likewise be convinced that they can form alliances in parliament that protect them and achieve their goals.

It was a mistake to configure the new Iraqi parliament so that it had only one chamber. In Shiite-majority Iraq, this way of proceeding ensures that Shiites will dominate the legislature. A way should be found to create an upper house, and to so gerrymander the provinces that it over-represents the Sunni minority. This two-house parliament could then serve as a check on any tyranny of the Shiite majority. Such a check is preferable to giving the Kurds a veto over the new constitution to be written in 2005, since giving a minority a veto seems unfair, whereas insisting that the constitution pass the upper house of parliament with a two-thirds majority is unexceptionable.

posted by Juan Cole at 4/22/2004 06:42:04 AM

Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

H.A.A.R.P.

It's not only greenhouse gas emissions: Washington's new world order weapons
have the ability to trigger climate change.

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/pandora/haarp.html

By Michel Chossudovsky - Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa and TFF associate, author of The Globalization of Poverty, second edition, Common Courage Press

The important debate on global warming under UN auspices provides but a partial picture of climate change; in addition to the devastating impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on the ozone layer, the World's climate can now be
modified as part of a new generation of sophisticated "non-lethal weapons." Both the Americans and the Russians have developed capabilities to manipulate the World's climate.

In the US, the technology is being perfected under the High-frequency Active Aural Research Program (HAARP) as part of the ("Star Wars") Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI). Recent scientific evidence suggests that HAARP is fully operational and has the ability of potentially triggering floods, droughts, hurricanes and earthquakes.

HAARP IS A MASS DESTRUCTIVE WEAPON - NOT PART OF ANY NEGOTIATIONS

From a military standpoint, HAARP is a weapon of mass destruction. Potentially, it constitutes an instrument of conquest capable of selectively destabilising agricultural and ecological systems of entire regions.

While there is no evidence that this deadly technology has been used, surely the United Nations should be addressing the issue of "environmental warfare" alongside the debate on the climatic impacts of greenhouse gases.

Despite a vast body of scientific knowledge, the issue of deliberate climatic manipulations for military use has never been explicitly part of the UN agenda on climate change. Neither the official delegations nor the environmental action groups participating in the Hague Conference on Climate Change (CO6) (November 2000) have raised the broad issue of "weather warfare" or "environmental modification techniques (ENMOD)" as relevant to an understanding of climate change.

The clash between official negotiators, environmentalists and American business lobbies has centered on Washington's outright refusal to abide by commitments on carbon dioxide reduction targets under the 1997 Kyoto protocol.(1) The impacts of military technologies on the World's climate are not an object of discussion or concern. Narrowly confined to greenhouse gases, the ongoing debate on climate change serves Washington's strategic and defense objectives.

"WEATHER WARFARE"

World renowned scientist Dr. Rosalie Bertell confirms that "US military scientists are working on weather systems as a potential weapon. The methods include
the enhancing of storms and the diverting of vapor rivers in the Earth's atmosphere to produce targeted droughts or floods."(2)

Already in the 1970s, former National Security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski had foreseen in his book "Between Two Ages" that:

"Technology will make available, to the leaders of major nations, techniques for conducting secret warfare, of which only a bare minimum of the security forces need be appraised... Techniques of weather modification could be employed to produce prolonged periods of drought or storm. "

Marc Filterman, a former French military officer, outlines several types of "unconventional weapons" using radio frequencies. He refers to "weather war," indicating that the U.S. and the Soviet Union had already "mastered the know-how needed to unleash sudden climate changes (hurricanes, drought) in the early 1980s." (3) These technologies make it "possible to trigger atmospheric disturbances by using Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) radar [waves]." (4)

A simulation study of future defense "scenarios" commissioned for the US Air Force calls for: "US aerospace forces to 'own the weather' by capitalizing on emerging technologies and focusing development of those technologies to war-fighting applications." From enhancing friendly operations or disrupting those of the enemy via small-scale tailoring of natural weather patterns to complete dominance of global communications and counterspace control, weather-modification offers the war fighter a wide-range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary. In the United States, weather-modification will likely become a part of national security policy with both domestic and international applications. Our government will pursue such a policy, depending on its interests, at various levels. (5)

THE HIGH-FREQUENCY ACTIVE AURAL RESEARCH PROGRAM - HAARP

The High-Frequency Active Aural Research Program (HAARP) based in Gokoma Alaska-jointly managed by the US Air Force and the US Navy-is part of a new generation of sophisticated weaponry under the US Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Operated by the Air Force Research Laboratory's Space Vehicles Directorate, HAARP constitutes a system of powerful antennas capable of creating "controlled local modifications of the ionosphere".

Scientist Dr. Nicholas Begich-actively involved in the public campaign against HAARP-describes HAARP as: "A super-powerful radiowave-beaming technology that lifts areas of the ionosphere (upper layer of the atmosphere) by focusing a beam and heating those areas. Electromagnetic waves then bounce back onto earth and penetrate everything-living and dead." (6)

Dr. Rosalie Bertell depicts HAARP as "a gigantic heater that can cause major disruption in the ionosphere, creating not just holes, but long incisions in the protective layer that keeps deadly radiation from bombarding the planet." (7)

MISLEADING PUBLIC OPINION

HAARP has been presented to public opinion as a program of scientific and academic research. US military documents seem to suggest, however, that HAARP's main objective is to "exploit the ionosphere for Department of Defense purposes." (8) Without explicitly referring to the HAARP program, a US Air Force study points to the use of "induced ionospheric modifications" as a means of altering weather patterns as well as disrupting enemy communications and radar.(9)

According to Dr. Rosalie Bertell, HAARP is part of a integrated weapons' system, which has potentially devastating environmental consequences: "It is related to fifty years of intensive and increasingly destructive programs to understand and control the upper atmosphere. It would be rash not to associate HAARP with the space laboratory construction which is separately being planned by the United States. HAARP is an integral part of a long history of space research and development of a deliberate military nature.

The military implications of combining these projects is alarming. The ability of the HAARP / Spacelab/ rocket combination to deliver very large amount of energy, comparable to a nuclear bomb, anywhere on earth via laser and particle beams, are frightening. The project is likely to be "sold" to the public as a space shield against incoming weapons, or, for the more gullible, a device for repairing the ozone layer. (10)

In addition to weather manipulation, HAARP has a number of related uses: "HAARP could contribute to climate change by intensively bombarding the atmosphere with high-frequency rays. Returning low-frequency waves at high intensity could also affect people's brains, and effects on tectonic movements cannot be ruled out. (11).

More generally, HAARP has the ability of modifying the World's electro-magnetic field. It is part of an arsenal of "electronic weapons" which US military researchers consider a "gentler and kinder warfare". (12)

WEAPONS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER

HAARP is part of the weapons arsenal of the New World Order under the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). From military command points in the US, entire national economies could potentially be destabilized through climatic manipulations. More importantly, the latter can be implemented without the knowledge of the enemy, at minimal cost and without engaging military personnel and equipment as in a conventional war. The use of HAARP-if it were to be applied-could have potentially devastating impacts on the World's climate.

Responding to US economic and strategic interests, it could be used to selectively modify climate in different parts of the World resulting in the destabilization of agricultural and ecological systems. It is also worth noting that the US Department of Defense has allocated substantial resources to the development of intelligence and monitoring systems on weather changes. NASA and the Department of Defense's National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) are working on "imagery for studies of flooding, erosion, land-slide hazards, earthquakes, ecological zones, weather forecasts, and climate change" with data relayed from satellites. (13)

POLICY INERTIA OF THE UNITED NATIONS

According to the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) signed at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro:

"States have, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law, the responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction." (14).

It is also worth recalling that an international Convention ratified by the UN General Assembly in 1997 bans "military or other hostile use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects." (15) Both the US and the Soviet Union were signatories to the Convention. The Convention defines "environmental modification techniques" as referring to any technique for changing-through the deliberate manipulation of natural processes-the dynamics, composition or structure of the earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere or of outer space." (16) Why then did the UN-disregarding the 1977 ENMOD Convention as well as its own charter-decide to exclude from its agenda climatic changes resulting from military programs?

EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT ACKNOWLEDGES IMPACT OF HAARP

In February 1998, responding to a report of Mrs. Maj. Britt Theorin-Swedish MEP and longtime peace advocate--, the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs, Security and Defense Policy held public hearings in Brussels on the HAARP program.(17) The Committee's "Motion for Resolution" submitted to the European Parliament: "Considers HAARP by virtue of its far-reaching impact on the environment to be a global concern and calls for its legal, ecological and ethical implications to be examined by an international independent body; [the Committee] regrets the repeated refusal of the United States Administration to give evidence to the public hearing into the environmental and public risks [of&] the HAARP program." (18.)

The Committee's request to draw up a "Green Paper" on "the environmental impacts of military activities", however, was casually dismissed on the grounds that the European Commission lacks the required jurisdiction to delve into "the links between environment and defense". (19) Brussels was anxious to avoid a showdown with Washington.

FULLY OPERATIONAL

While there is no concrete evidence of HAARP having been used, scientific findings suggest that it is at present fully operational. What this means is that HAARP could potentially be applied by the US military to selectively modify the climate of an "unfriendly nation" or "rogue state" with a view to destabilizing its national economy. Agricultural systems in both developed and developing countries are already in crisis as a result of New World Order policies including market deregulation, commodity dumping, etc. Amply documented, IMF and World Bank "economic medicine" imposed on the Third World and the countries of the former Soviet block has largely contributed to the destabilization of domestic agriculture. In turn, the provisions of the World Trade Organization (WTO) have supported the interests of a handful of Western agri-biotech conglomerates in their quest to impose genetically modified (GMO) seeds on farmers throughout the World.

It is important to understand the linkage between the economic, strategic and military processes of the New World Order. In the above context, climatic manipulations under the HAARP program (whether accidental or deliberate) would inevitably exacerbate these changes by weakening national economies, destroying infrastructure and potentially triggering the bankruptcy of farmers over vast areas. Surely national governments and the United Nations should address
the possible consequences of HAARP and other "non-lethal weapons" on climate change.

NOTES

1. The latter calls for nations to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions by an average of 5.2 percent to become effective
between 2008 and 2012. See Background of Kyoto Protocol at
http://www.globalwarming.net/gw11.html.

2. The Times, London, 23 November 2000.

3. Intelligence Newsletter, December 16, 1999.

4. Ibid.

5. Air University of the US Air Force, AF 2025 Final
Report, http://www.au.af.mil/au/2025/ (emphasis added).

6. Nicholas Begich and Jeane Manning, The Military's
Pandora's Box, Earthpulse Press,
http://www.xyz.net/~nohaarp/earthlight.html. See also the
HAARP home page at http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/).

7. See Briarpatch, January, 2000. (emphasis added).

8. Quoted in Begich and Manning, op cit.

9. Air University, op cit.

10. Rosalie Bertell, Background of the HAARP Program, 5
November, 1996,
http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/envronmt/weapons.htm

11. Begich and Manning, op cit.

12. Don Herskovitz, Killing Them Softly, Journal of
Electronic Defense, August 1993. (emphasis added). According
to Herskovitz, "electronic warfare" is defined by the US
Department of Defense as "military action involving the use
of electromagnetic energyƒ" The Journal of Electronic
Defense at http://www.jedefense.com/ has published a range
of articles on the application of electronic and
electromagnetic military technologies.

13. Military Space, 6 December, 1999.

14. UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, New York,
1992. See complete text at
http://www.unfccc.de/resource/conv/conv_002.html, (emphasis
added).

15. See Associated Press, 18 May 1977.

16. Environmental Modification Ban Faithfully Observed,
States Parties Declare, UN Chronicle, July, 1984, Vol. 21,
p. 27.

17. European Report, 7 February 1998.

18. European Parliament, Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Security and Defense Policy, Brussels, doc. no. A4-0005/99,
14 January 1999.

19. EU Lacks Jurisdiction to Trace Links Between
Environment and Defense, European Report, 3 February
1999.

Copyright by Michel Chossudovsky, Ottawa, November, 2000.

All rights reserved.

Permission is granted to post this text on non-commercial community internet sites, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To publish this text in printed and/or other forms contact the author at chossudovsky@videotron.ca, fax: 1-514-4256224.

Michel Chossudovsky
Department of Economics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, K1N6N5

Voice box: 1-613-562-5800, ext. 1415

Fax: 1-514-425-6224

A Petition to US Department of Justice to Evaluate the Anti-Defamation League

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/480875966

http://www.eaif.org/

It appears that the Anti-Defamation League and others, through purposeful selective writings, publications and videos have, themselves, become an Anti-European American diatribe that has resulted in hate speech and hate crimes against European Americans in cities throughout the US.

Many European Americans believe that the Anti-Defamation League is a hate group working to falsely portray European American as the purveyors of racial animus, and the perpetrators of hate crimes and all others as our victims.

If not, why would they author a book called "Hate Hurts..." and push it in our schools when it falsely portrays European Americans as THE haters?

Why would they refuse to allow European Americans to join a coalition of "minority" groups fighting hatred because they say “historically only minorities have been the victims of hate crimes"?

Why would they run a full page ad listing victims of hatred, but exclude European Americans?

Why would the ADL Director state "...frankly, hate crimes against European [American]s is not the burning issue of the day," when whites were actually most often victims of racially motivated multiple assailant street attacks in San Francisco?

And, why would reporter Matt Issacs write an in-depth investigative article about the Anti Defamation League for the SF Weekly, February 2-8 2000 titled, "Spy vs. Spite" wherein he asks the question "...should a group who spied on thousands of Californians be allowed to police the web [for kids]?"

Use of extreme selective writings, publications and videos of excessive violence against all racial groups except for a few European Americans at the urging of the Anti-Defamation League and others in their portrayal, displays a clear prejudicial bent against European Americans.

United States law documents that "bias related" or a "hate crime" means a "designated act that demonstrates an accused's prejudice based on the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, marital status, personal appearance, sexual orientation, family responsibility, physical handicap, matriculation, or political affiliation of a victim of the subject designated act." State and Federal statutes may apply.

We implore US Attorney General John Ashcroft, and the US Department of Justice to evaluate the anti-European American materials that are clearly present in their writings, books, videos and teachings, and ask that civil, criminal, and Federal hate-crime laws be utilized not only against the perpetrators involved in each and every act which has been encouraged, but against the authors, directors, producers, and screen writers responsible.

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