I've Heard That Song Before

Aljazeera Magazine
by William Hughes

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Kevin Zeese is the director of Democracy Rising, an organization working to end the Iraqi war and the Occupation. He is an independent candidate for the U.S. Senate in Maryland, who is looking to bring together, in a unity campaign, the Green, Populist and Libertarian Parties, along with disenchanted members of the state’s Democratic and Republican organizations.

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We know that both parties are selling the country to the highest bidder. So, in a historical context, where do you want to be? Republicans controlled by corporations? Democrats controlled by corporations? Or, with some independent movement that is going to challenge the lack of representation of the people.

I think in a historical context, we know where we want to be...What we do now will have an effect. We make a difference. So, waking people up to make a difference is very important to moving things forward electorally.

We’ve got to break the two party straight jacket, so people can vote for what they believe in and make their own choice. The two parties treat all of us as children, as lazy morons, who are stuck watching too much TV...So, many voters feel trapped.

The general election, in Maryland, is set for Nov. 7, 2006. Zeese has labeled the two opposition parties as “corporate dominated.” He has written that if there was ever a moment for Marylanders
“to get organized” and to “throw the bums out,” it’s right now.

The Baltimore Sun also wrote that Zeese is “addressing issues that major parties won’t, such
as challenging U.S. policy in Israel and a tax-reform plan that would exempt an individual's first $100,000 in income from taxation.”

Richard Cohen, who writes for the Washington Post, said that 65 percent of the Democratic Party’s resources comes from the hard right Israel Lobby and 35 percent of the Republican Party’s resources comes from the same place.

As of today’s date, 2,475 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq and another 17,869 seriously wounded. We won’t know, however, for years what effects the radioactive depleted uranium dust has had on the health, and sanity, of those required to serve in Iraq, as well as on the 27 million people of that unfortunate country.

The cost to U.S. taxpayers for the conflict now stands at $286 billion. The number of Iraqis slain may be as high as 300,000. In addition to the disgraceful Abu Ghraib torture scandal, recent reports indicate that some of the U.S. troops may have engaged in war crimes by intentionally slaughtering unarmed Iraqi civilians, including children.

Meanwhile, the prime architect of the Iraqi war, the then-Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, a grotesque Neocon, has come out of this debacle smelling like a rose. He was rewarded with the high paying sinecure of the presidency of the World Bank in Washington, D.C.

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U.S. foreign policy shapes events in every corner of the globe.  Nowhere is this truer than in the Middle East, a region of recurring instability and enormous strategic importance.

Most recently, the Bush Administration’s attempt to transform the region into a community of democracies has helped produce a resilient insurgency in Iraq, a sharp rise in world oil prices, and terrorist bombings in Madrid, London, and Amman. With so much at stake for so many, all countries need to understand the forces that drive U.S. Middle East policy. 

The U.S. national interest should be the primary object of American foreign policy. For the past several decades, however, and especially since the Six Day War in 1967, the centerpiece of U.S. Middle East policy has been its relationship with Israel.

The combination of unwavering U.S. support for Israel and the related effort to spread democracy throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized U.S. security.

This situation has no equal in American political history.  Why has the United States been willing to set aside its own security in order to advance the interests of another state?

One might assume that the bond between the two countries is based on shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives. . .however, neither of those explanations can account for the remarkable level of maerial and diplomatic support that the United States provides to Israel.

-- John J. Mearsheimer - Department of Political Science - University of Chicago
-- Stephen M. Walt - John F. Kennedy School of Government - Harvard University

Kennedy School of Government: Download paper /.pdf format

The Israel Lobby has struck again. This time their victim is Christian evangelist Dale Crowley who has been the host of two popular radio programs for the last 20 years. Listeners tuned in regularly to his daily program "The King's Business" and to his saturday morning broadcast "Focus On Israel". But things have changed.

Listeners will still be able to hear one of his programs, but the other was abruptly terminated by station management. Do you know which program was terminated? No? Go on, take a guess!

Mr. Crowley was told by the general manager of station WFAX that his Saturday morning broadcast was being terminated immediately. He was given no warning, notice, or explanation -- not even an opportunity to bid farewell to his longtime listeners.

The program was canceled because supporters of Israel (Israel Lobby) had complained to the radio station about Crowley’s criticisms of Israel. Poor Mr. Crowley. He must have forgotten that the Israelis are God's "chosen people" and that the land of Israel (Zion) is consequently beyond reproach.

And consider the horror that members of the Israel Lobby must have endured all those years. Imagine! Mr. Crowley, a Gentile, saying critical things about Israel, a Jewish state .. every .. Saturday .. morning. Oy vey!

Over the years Mr. Crowley has dared to broadcast facts about the Israeli government's efforts to curtail the work of Christian missionaries in the Holy Land. This repression and bigotry is evidenced by bills introduced in the Israeli parliament that would penalize Christians who engage in missionary work; anyone convicted of such evangelism would be sent to jail.

In addition, Crowley has used his Saturday morning broadcast to inform Christians in the Washington,DC area of how the Israelis have oppressed Christian Palestinians -- uprooting them from their homes, vandalizing their churches -- and otherwise making life difficult for Christian Palestinians and other Christian Arabs in the Middle East.

Crowley has also upset many supporters of Israel, particularly the Zionist Lobby, by pointing out that a New York-born Jewish atheist (yes, there Jews who don't believe in God) has more right to live in the holy city of Jerusalem than a Palestinian Christian minister whose family has lived there for 1,000 years.

For daring to speak truths such as this, Mr. Crowley’s “Focus on Israel” program has been banned from the airwaves by the management of WFAX radio. Although it’s quite clear, according to observers who have been investigating the matter, that there was heavy-handed pressure brought to bear on WFAX. And just where do you suppose this heavey-handed pressure came from? Go on, take a guess!

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, two college professors, have written a paper describing Israel's ability to influence U.S. government policy in the Middle East. The paper has surprised many people and has alarmed others, not only because of it's content but because of the unusual attention it is receiving from the media.

The existence of the Israel lobby has been known by many people and for many years. Information regarding the lobby has been allowed to appear in print, but usually in contexts where it can easily be dismissed by labeling it anti-semitic or extremist.

To disparage the Israel lobby is to disparage Israel, a taboo which many people in this country have come to believe is sacrosanct and tantamount to blasphemy. Over the years (decades) criticism of Israel or Zionism has been relegated to something which transpires only behind closed doors.

Titled "The Israel Lobby," the piece argued that a wide-ranging coalition that includes neoconservatives, Christian Zionists, leading journalists and of course the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, exerts a "stranglehold" on Middle East policy and public debate on the issue. While supporting the moral cause for the existence of Israel, the authors said there was neither a strategic nor a moral interest in America's siding so strongly with post-occupation Israel. Many Americans thought the Iraq War was about oil, but "the war was motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure."
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The New York Times, having first downplayed the article, printed a long op-ed by historian Tony Judt saying that out of fear, the mainstream media were failing to face important ideas the article had put forward. And Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, praised it at the Middle East Institute for conveying "blinding flashes of the obvious," ideas "that were whispered in corners rather than said out loud at cocktail parties where someone else could hear you."
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While criticisms of the lobby have circulated widely for years and been published at the periphery, the Mearsheimer-Walt paper stands out because it was so frontal and pointed, and because it was published online by Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, where Walt is a professor and outgoing academic dean. "It was inevitably going to take someone from Harvard [to get this discussed]," says Phyllis Bennis, a writer on Middle East issues at the Institute for Policy Studies.

Professors Mearsheimer and Walt have opened the doors and taken the issue out of the closet; they have removed it to center stage and turned on the spotlight. Their actions are commendable and, in my opinion, heroic.

I believe the paper may signal the beginning of a turning point, a milestone with repercussions that eventually will compel a significant realignment of the relationship between Israel and the United States, a relationship which has too long gone unquestioned.

Is this a good thing? A bad thing? Well now, that all depends upon your point of view -- doesn't it?

Download Paper

The democratically elected Palestinian government has been inaugurated, but not all those elected to the new parliament have taken their seats.

For some, the best they can do is have a life-sized photograph of themselves propped up in their place. They are absent because they are in Israeli jails. The silent presence of these photographs is intended to serve as a constant reminder of those Palestinians behind bars.

Detentions have always been among the most hated aspects of the Israeli occupation. The Palestinian government will demand that the release of all prisoners be part of any final peace deal. There are currently about 9,000 Palestinians in prison.

Over the decades of Israeli occupation, detentions have gone much further than simply rounding up would-be bombers. Before the Oslo peace accords, flying the Palestinian flag was enough to get you jailed. You could end up behind bars for displaying a poster of Yasser Arafat or participating in a peaceful demonstration. Possession of a weapon can now earn you several months in prison. And so can membership in the governing party, Hamas.

Many Palestinians regard all those in jail as heroes, whatever they have been sentenced for. More than 700 of those in jail are in what is called administrative detention; many of them have been detained for years without charge or trial.

The Israeli human rights group, B'Tselem, says:

While detainees may appeal, neither they nor their attorneys are allowed to see the evidence. Israel has made a charade out of the entire system of procedural safeguards in both domestic and international law regarding the right to liberty and due process.

When it comes to human rights and humane treatment of prisoners, it seems the Zionist regime in Israel and the Pro-Zionist regime in the United States have similar ethics and adhere to similar policies. Consider Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and the "secret prisons" in eastern Europe.

Imagine what it would be like living under a fascist regime. Citizens in Israel and citizens in the United States should count themselves fortunate because they live in a "democracy" -- I guess.

Midi: Marseille

I want to say congratulations to all the men and women of France who participated in the demonstrations during the past few weeks.

Your government wanted to enact a law which would have had a devastating effect upon your lives -- a law intended to disrupt your working careers by restraining your wages and returning you to the ranks of the unemployed every couple of years.

Well, you stood up and told those pieces of merde in no uncertain terms "Oh No You're Not!" To defeat this enemy who threatened your livlihood required courage, determination, and perseverance. You were lacking in none of these qualities.

Your government is fearful of more riots by the immigrant riffraff which has ravaged your cities, your culture, your economy. Mr. Chirac and Mr. Villepin had sought to avoid more riots by providing employment opportunities for immigrants who often are willing to work for less money.

In other words, their plan was to reduce unemployment for immigrants at the expense of increasing unemployment for yourselves, the native born people who sustain the culture and heritage of your ancestors.

You are not responsible for the immigrants being in your beloved country. Let the people who opened the door to these immigrants now endure the consequences of their presence. Let the costs come out of their pockets. Let the suffering come out of their lives.

Again, I congratulate you on a job well done. You have my admiration and my respect.

-- Sal Ventura

Next week the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the world's most powerful lobby for Israel, will hold its annual conference. Ceremonies will kick off with the singing of Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem. It wasn't sung last year because two AIPAC staffers were under indictment for passing classified defense information to AIPAC officials and to diplomats at the Israeli embassy in Washington.

The staffers, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, received the information from former Pentagon employee Lawrence Franklin. Mr. Franklin worked as an analyst whose expertise focused on Iran. As such, he had access to executive branch (white house) deliberations regarding U.S. military options and scenarios in the Middle East. He is currently serving a 12 year prison sentence.

There have been previous incidents of espionage against the United States in recent years, but none with as much catastrophic potential. At stake is the future of United States-Middle East relations. More specifically, it raises the issue of whether the neocons (Zionists) will be able to push the United States into a military confrontation with Iran. AIPAC lobbying and information gathering have been aggressively directed toward having the United States fight yet another war on Israel's behalf.

By the way, if anyone is planning to visit the vice president this Sunday, you're going to be disappointed. Mr. Cheney won't be home. No, he won't be on a hunting trip. He'll be at the AIPAC conference. As a matter of fact, he's going to be the keynote speaker. I just thought you'd like to know.

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I hear people refer to the United States as a democracy and as a democratic republic. The only time I hear it refered to as a nation with a government of the people, for the people, and by the people is when a politician (or some other opportunist) makes a speech on the 4th of July or the 11th of September or the 19th of whatever.

There's nothing wrong with making inspirational speeches, patriotic or otherwise, but not at the expense of reality. And the reality is that Lincoln's phrase is now but a tattered remnant of a noble idea which long ago has fallen or been tossed by the wayside.

In 1943 Franklin Roosevelt and his cohorts succeeded in passing a law which required working people to prepay their income tax by having a portion of their earnings withheld each payday. He assured citizens this was a temporary expediency, necessary to supply the needs of our soldiers who were risking their lives for the cause of freedom. The war ended a couple of years later. The temporary withholding law did not.

So how has this law changed our beloved country, what does it mean? There are multiple meanings, to be sure. But there is one which towers above all the others: the federal government now has a guananteed income. As long as people work for a living, the government with the aid of corporate collaborators, takes its cut by skimming it off the top of workers' paychecks.

The citizens of this country, comprised overwhelmingly of working people, were pandered into relinquishing control of the government purse strings. The decisions to approve or withhold funding for wars, immigration, foreign aid, etc., now rest in the hands of a relatively minuscule segment of the population -- the bureaucrats in Washington.

Control of the purse strings, a prequisite for government of the people, for the people, and by the people, has effectively been transferred from the working class to the ruling class.

June 10, 1943 remains, in my opinion, one of the darkest days in the history of the United States and its citizens. It is truly a day that lives in infamy.

Related Post -- 12/09/04

Yesterday I turned a knob on my radio and switched from a country music station to a local talk radio program here in Saint Louis. The usual topics were being discussed: politics, war, race, crime. I soon heard a caller say that politicians in this country are influenced by large numbers of people. I first heard this assertion when I was a young man. And while it may have been true at one time, I don't believe it's true anymore.

Remember ten years ago when people in the United States were talking about NAFTA? The politicians, senators and representatives, were deluged with more than a million letters, e-mails, phone calls, and telegrams. These communications were overwhelmingly against passage of the "agreement". So what did the politicians do? They passed it anyway. This is history. This is common knowledge.

I want to say something now that probably is not common knowledge.

If you want to influence a politician in the United States to vote for or against an issue, you need to do something that will impact that politician in a way that elicits a genuine emotional response -- something that causes him or her to feel truly happy, sad, angry, afraid, etc. The particular emotion isn't necessarily important. What is important is that the emotional response be genuine, authentic.

Put an envelope filled with hundred dollar bills on a politician's desk. It's a tried and true way to make him happy. It's done every day. Initiate eminent domain proceedings on his vacation home in order to replace it with a shopping mall. That'll certainly make him angry. Cause his favorite hunting dog to become lost and he'll surely feel sad. And putting a horse's head under his bedsheet is guaranteed to instill more than a nominal amount of fear.

All these tactics are reprehensible to varying degrees. So what do we do? Continue to write letters, send e-mails, leave messages on answering machines? I say we wait.

Many citizens in the United States (and in other countries) are angry because of what the people administering the country's government have done and are doing -- the blatant
lies, the self-serving greed, the intrusive foreign policy, the wanton killing.

Well, angry doesn't cut it!

When citizens become mad as hell and make a gut decision to no
longer tolerate the despicable and shameful farce that the United States government has become, then it's time to remember what influences a politician and what doesn't.

Is this the methodology of a terrorist? A revolutionary? An insurgent? Perhaps.