ROVE SIGNS ON AS DIRECTOR FOR CLINTON CAMPAIGN
DLC hails "foremost genius in American political life," predicts Hillary victory in '08
Congressional Black, Women and Latino caucuses express shock,
indignation, then renewed support for campaigning a millimeter to the left of the Right
Hillary renounces "it takes a village to raise a child" in favor of "it takes a villain to raise a monster"
Bill proposes tax breaks for those who "work hard and play by Rove's rules," says demonization of Rove rewards Osama bin Laden
Rove praises Clinton couple’s skill at selling Republicanism to people who believe they are liberal but really support totalitarian elitism . . . calling for "a clean campaign," denies connection to rumors that Osama and Obama are brothers
This brief exclusive interview was acquired by Legalienate's intrepid reporter:
Legalienate: What provoked you to make such a stunning and unpredictable move?
Clinton: I believe his obsession with my campaign was a sign of his deep rooted support, and my feminist background enabled me to correctly interpret his real motivations. Also, I believe his mildly ruthless campaign strategies would be the best way of not only taking the nomination, but the presidency itself.
Legalienate: And you, Mr. Rove?
Rove: I always thought Hillary supplied the firmness behind Bill’s more flaccid public persona and that she would make a much better, more ballsy, if you will, president, than he or any of our past leaders. No pun intended.
Legalienate: Including Bush?
Rove: Most especially. He has a lot of empty space between his ears, and between his thighs for that matter. This nation needs a strong, macho leader who can disarm more sensitive types by appealing to chick flick emotions while carrying out murderous policies. I think Hillary fills that Bill, so to speak. Pun intended.
Legalienate: How can you recover those on both sides who seem to be displeased with what many consider this shocking move?
Clinton: There's nothing shocking here. This is politics. You raise the money to hire the best people, and Karl is clearly the best that money can buy at what he does; correctly and properly arranging for the most careful destruction of adversaries, whether foreign countries or political opponents.
Rove: Indeed, as proven by Iraq and John Kerry and that global warming guy.
Legalienate: Al Gore?
Rove: That's him.
Opponents of the move immediately cited anonymous stories being circulated about John Edwards homosexual past and Barack Obama’s wife beating as evidence that the campaign would embrace even lower tactics than usual.
“We won't be having the high toned debates and policy discussions, in which Democrats compare ways to oppose the war while prolonging its funding, now that this unprincipled political demon has taken control of our only feminist candidate,” said a spokesperson for long time Clinton supporters, the NAOWWDTSTTMDOIBCO (National Association of Women Who Do The Same Things That Men Do Only In Better Coordinated Outfits).
On the other hand, T.V. broadcasters appear to be delighted. A spokesman for Male Executives Distorting Information Anonymously (MEDIA) says that gutter politics deliver the best ratings:
"Actually, we're hoping the law will be amended so Schwarzenegger can go up against Hillary. Her cleavage and his groping reputation would really be hot, and campaign posters showing Arnie dunking Hillary face-first in the toilet bowl while she kicks him in the nuts with steel-toed feminazi boots would sell like hotcakes."
Stay tuned as we closely follow this and other stories of our democracy in action
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Imperial Demon Watch: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1)
by Michael K. Smith
"Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the hero of every Muslim cab driver from Morocco to Malaysia because of his disreputable Holocaust denial."
-----Peter Hitchens, The American Conservative, June 4, 2007
"As to the Holocaust, I just raised a few questions. And I didn't receive any answers to my questions."
-----Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Time Magazine interview, September 18, 2006
"The populism of Ahmadinejad and Hizbollah is an alternative to civil society in the Middle East. By recruiting the poor and disenfranchised, they are closer to people's needs than governments are. Which is why they have this enormous following."
-----Jordan's Prince Hassan, BBC News, September 20, 2006
"Pro-Western governments in the Middle East may not like it (Iran and Hizbollah's power) but there is nothing they can do. American influence in the area is visibly declining."
-----World Affairs editor John Simpson, BBC News, September 20, 2006
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is slippery, gifted at spin and misdirection. He’s "hardline," an enigma, a mystical nutcase in an "apocalyptic mood;" he wouldn't mind detonating a nuclear weapon. He's cocky, bordering on arrogant, even Hitler-like, and prone to rambling rants. He seems to be a humorless technocrat, unhinged, and a stranger to the modern world. He's primitive, delusional, a true-believer in the "merciless" Ayatollah Khomeini, and above all, genocidal: he wants to wipe the Jews from the face of the earth. No, these are not the rash judgments of a demented rookie journalist, but the consensus view of an allegedly "value-neutral" U.S. journalistic profession.
Since the U.S. media have once again abdicated their responsibility to be reasonably objective, we are left to do our thinking for ourselves. Fair enough. Let us then examine some of the statements the "crazy" Ahmadinejad has made and see if they really fit the image of a loose cannon on deck, a menace to his own people and the entire world.
In a September 20, 2006 interview with MSNBC's Brian Williams Ahmadinejad pointed out that the allegedly peaceful intentions of the U.S. national security state can't be taken seriously: "We think that people who produce bombs - the atomic bomb cannot, in fact, speak of supporting world peace." He emphasized that Washington has been unremittingly hostile to Iran, not the other way around: "Iran has been under sanctions for 27 years. Even spare parts for aircraft are denied to us. . . . from day one (of the Iranian Revolution) the U.S. government has been against our nation. . . . it gave (support) to Saddam Hussein during the eight year war against Iran," in which "200,000 Iranian people, young men, died. Hundreds of thousands more were injured. . . . There was a terrorist group inside Iran, that, in fact, assassinated many of our authorities and officials. The president, the prime minister, the ministers. The head of the supreme court. Many members of parliament. Regular people. And America supported this group." Williams, contesting none of this, abruptly changed the topic to free speech.
Accused of being on the path of nuclear weaponry, Ahmadinejad not only denied it, but threw the ridiculous premise of Williams' question back in his face: " . . . I ask, did Iran build the atomic bomb and use it? Who are the ones who are testing the third generation of nuclear bombs? . . . We are against the atomic bomb . . . we are against killing people." Asked why Iran has large, long-range missiles if it has no intention of developing nuclear weapons, Ahmadinejad pointed to the absurdity of worrying about a non-nuclear state's missiles when many others in the region already have nuclear arsenals and Washington nuked two defenseless cities as soon as it developed the bomb. Ahmadinejad pressed Williams to resolve this contradictory premise, but the MSNBC host preferred to move on to a question about the Pope.
When the conversation turned to the threat of war over Iran's (legal) uranium enrichment program, Ahmadinejad responded that questions along this line would be better put to a U.S. politician, since the U.S. is the one threatening war. Washington's bellicose and domineering approach, Ahmadinejad added, is obsolete: "The world has changed . . . The time for world empires has ended. The U.S. government thinks that it's still the period after World War II . . . when they came out as victor. And enjoyed special rights. And can rule therefore, over the rest of the world . . . I think that we need to resort to logic, not war." Williams once again raised the specter of an Iranian nuclear weapon, but Ahmadinejad dismissed the question as a selective concern, since Washington not only hasn't criticized nuclear states in the region, but actively supports them. Israel alone has hundreds of nuclear bombs.
Inevitably, the subject of the Holocaust came up. Ahmadinejad politely attempted to raise three questions: (1) "Why is it that only a select group of those who were killed (in WWII) have become so prominent and important?" (2) "Why is it that those who ask questions (about the Holocaust) are persecuted?" (3) ". . . .if this (Holocaust) happened . . . why should the Palestinians pay for it now?" Williams answered the first question by saying that the Jews were killed by genocide, whereas the tens of millions of others killed were victims of war. Ahmadinejad responded that tens of millions of Christians and Muslims who were not in any way militarily involved in WWII were nonetheless targeted and killed. The moral difference between innocents dying in concentration camps and innocents blown up, burned alive, or atomized out of existence remained unexplored. Ahmadinejad's second and third questions, obviously relevant to the discussion, were likewise ignored.
Williams couldn't resist indulging the U.S. obsession with suicide bombers, asking what Ahmadinejad would feel as a father if one of his children decided to become one. Ahmadinejad pointed out that in a nation with few weapons joining a group of suicide bombers is the equivalent of volunteering to serve in the military, a major difference being, in the U.S. military's case, that the latter cannot plausibly be described as a self-defense force, since it operates thousands of miles beyond U.S. borders. He insisted that Iran, not the U.S., is the one with cause to worry about being attacked: " . . . you look around us. There are hundreds of forces and troops, hundreds of thousands of troops around us. Under the pretext of freedom and democracy. They don't value the people of the region. The people of the region know how to run their own affairs. It's regretful. This (intervention) coming from a group that supported Saddam for eight years. Saddam was the biggest dictator in our region. Even today, they support countries that have had no elections whatsoever. But still they speak of creating democracy through war. . . . It's impossible . . ."
Two days before his MSNBC interview, Ahmadinejad was interviewed by Time Magazine's Scott Macleod, who entitled his piece, "A Date With a Dangerous Mind." Among the "dangerous" sentiments Ahmadinejad expressed in that interview are the following; (1) "The U.S. government should not interfere in our affairs. They should live their own lives. They should serve the interests of the U.S. people. . . . Then there would be no problems . . ." (2) "We are opposed to the development of nuclear weapons. . . in my (2005) address to the U.N. General Assembly, I suggested that a committee should be set up in order to disarm all the countries that possess nuclear weapons. . ." (3) "Problems cannot be solved through bombs. Bombs are of little use today. We need logic." (4) Question: "Why do your supporters chant 'Death to America?'" Ahmadinejad: " . . . it means they hate aggression, and they hate bullying tactics, and they hate violations of the rights of nations and discrimination." (5) Question: "Are you ready to open direct negotiations with the U.S.?" Ahmadinejad: "It was the U.S. which broke up relations with us. We didn't take that position. . ." (6) Question: "You have been quoted as saying Israel should be wiped off the map. Was that merely rhetoric, or do you mean it?" Ahmadinejad: "Our suggestion is that the 5 million Palestinian refugees come back to their homes, and then the entire people on those lands hold a referendum and choose their own system of government. This is a democratic and popular way." (7) Question: "Do you believe the Jewish people have a right to their own state?" Ahmadinejad: "We do not oppose it. In any country in which the people are ready to vote for the Jews to come to power, it is up to them. . . . But Zionists are different from Jews."
In a May 30, 2006 interview with the Iranian president the German magazine Der Spiegel took issue with Ahmadinejad for regarding the Holocaust and the oppression of the Palestinians as aspects of a single issue. Der Spiegel's interviewer insisted that the fate of the Palestinians was "an entirely different issue." Ahmadinejad objected: "No, no, the roots of the Palestinian conflict must be sought in history. The Holocaust and Palestine are directly connected with one another. And if the Holocaust actually occurred, then you should permit impartial groups from the whole world to research this. Why do you restrict the research to a certain group?" His question went unanswered in preference for a query about whether he still believed the Holocaust was merely a "myth." He replied that belief should follow substantiation: "I will only accept something as truth if I am actually convinced of it." If this is extremism, we need more of it.
Ahmadinejad went on to point out to Der Spiegel that there is a divergence of views on the Holocaust, with orthodox Holocaust proponents rejecting direct debate in favor of dogged insistence on the allegedly racist motives of revisionists, which practice helps to insure that revisionist scholars in Europe continue to be imprisoned merely for stating what they think. He concluded that "an impartial group has to come together to investigate and render an opinion in this very important subject, because the clarification of this issue will contribute to the solution of global problems," in particular, the Palestine question. He added that there was nothing remotely odd about such a stance, since "normally, governments promote and support the work of researchers on historical events and do not put them in prison." In short, the people with explaining to do are not Holocaust revisionists, but those whose arguments are (literally) upheld by blasphemy laws and heresy trials.
The Der Spiegel interview makes clear that Ahmadinejad, like revisionists generally, does not, in fact, deny that Jews were brutally treated by the Nazis. After making his standard claim that, "If there really had been a Holocaust, Israel ought to be located in Europe, not in Palestine," he goes on to criticize Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, saying that, "aggression, occupation and a repetition of the Holocaust won't bring peace." (italics added) This implies that European Jewry was subjected to at least ethnic cleansing, if not outright genocide, depending on how one evaluates Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.
In a 2006 interview with Barbara Slavin of USA Today Ahmadinejad said that if the U.S. wants talks with Iran, "they have to take a hard look at their own behavior . . . They choose to threaten us and make false allegations and they want to impose their lifestyle on others and this is not acceptable." Asked why he keeps saying "upsetting" things about Israel and the Holocaust, he replied, "I don't know who is annoyed by revealing facts. But we know for sure that the people of Palestine are being killed every day with the Holocaust as a pretext." Presented with the naive query, "Why don't you go to Auschwitz and see the gas chambers for yourself?" he answered, "My going there will not solve the problem. I cannot take a trip back 60 years but researchers can do that." He conceded that the testimony of Holocaust survivors was relevant but insisted that "an impartial group should (also) go there and investigate." He concluded the interview with the sound observation that, "The wave of disgust toward U.S. policies is increasing. They only recognize their own friends, not others. We have in this world 6 billion people. It's not an American club. The majority are not Americans and are not interested to be Americans."
In his 2006 UN address Ahmadinejad outlined how the unresolved question of Palestine is bound up with the Holocaust: "Under the pretext of protecting some of the survivors of (WWII) the land of Palestine was occupied through war, aggression and the displacement of millions of its inhabitants." After being "placed under the control of some of the War survivors (European Jews)," who brought "even larger population groups from elsewhere in the world (non-European Jews) who had not been even affected by the Second World War," Israel's "government was established in the territory of others with a population collected from across the world at the expense of driving millions of the rightful inhabitants of the land into a diaspora and homelessness." Born of dispossession, the Jewish state could never make itself belong: ". . . from its inception, that regime (Israel) has been a constant source of threat and insecurity in the Middle East region, waging war and spilling blood and impeding the progress of regional countries." The U.N., supposedly dedicated to peace, continues to ignore Israel's atrocities. "People are being bombarded in their own homes and their children murdered in their own streets and alleys. But no authority, not even the Security Council, can afford them any support or protection." This is not by chance.
Addressing Israel's 2006 Lebanon invasion, Ahmadinejad tore away the U.S. mask of "disinterested" diplomacy and accused Washington of collaboration in aggression: "For thirty-three long days, the Lebanese lived under the barrage of fire and bombs and close to 1.5 million of them were displaced; meanwhile some members of the Security Council practically chose a path that provided ample opportunity for the aggressor to achieve its objectives militarily." Those entrusted with preserving the peace proved impotent. "We witnessed that the Security Council of the United Nations was practically incapacitated by certain powers to even call for a ceasefire. The Security Council sat idly by for so many days, witnessing the cruel scenes of atrocities against the Lebanese. . . Why? . . . . the answer is self-evident. When the power behind the hostilities is itself a permanent member of the Security Council, how then can this Council fulfill its responsibilities?"
Denouncing a flawed U.N. structure that privileges a handful of Security Council members over the vast membership of the General Assembly, Ahmadinejad complained that, "certain powers equate themselves with the international community, and consider their decisions superseding that of over 180 countries." These powers, most conspicuously the U.S. and Britain, have renounced reciprocal dialogue and mutual compromise: "If they have differences with a nation or state, they drag it to the Security Council and as claimants, arrogate to themselves simultaneously the roles of prosecutor, judge and executioner. Is this a just order?" The U.S., far in the lead in excercising Security Council veto rights, is destroying the legitimacy of the U.N. by insisting that its views be accepted as universal truths :" . . . the direct relation between the abuse of the veto and the erosion of the legitimacy and effectiveness of the Council has now been clearly and undeniably established." Without a democratization of power, justice is unobtainable: "We cannot, and should not, expect the eradication, or even containment, of injustice, imposition and oppression without reforming the structure and working methods of the Council." Furthermore, the victims of the international capitalist order, excluded from consideration from the beginning, are also entitled to a share of power: " . . . the Non-Aligned Movement, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the African continent should each have a representative as a permanent member of the Security Council, with veto privilege [in order to] prevent further trampling of the rights of nations."
Much as these views may be disliked, however, Ahmadinejad is the controversy he is because of his remarks on the Holocaust, the mother of all dogmas. Be that as it may, however, there is really nothing objectionable in what he has said on the topic. On December 14, 2005 Al Jazeera quoted Ahmadinejad as follows: "They have fabricated a legend under the name Massacre of the Jews, and they hold it higher than God himself, religion itself and the prophets themselves. If somebody in their country questions God, nobody says anything, but if somebody denies the myth of the massacre of the Jews, the Zionist loudspeakers and the governments in the pay of Zionism will start to scream." Allowing for imprecise translation, this appears to be the literal truth, which, one should again note, does not rule out that Jews were viciously brutalized by Nazi policies. The "legend" has to do with gas chambers, for which no forensic evidence exists, and an alleged industrial assembly line of Jewish death, carried out in response to a secret order of extermination from Adolf Hitler, as well as what is said to be 6 million Jewish victims of this process. In spite of much hysterical insistence to the contrary, there is no reason to suppose that skepticism about gas chambers, an assembly line of death, and the sacred 6 million figure, necessarily leads to the conclusion that Jews were treated well in Nazi Germany. Nor has Ahmadinejad been shown to have made such a case. Abominable oppression and suffering take many forms, with widely varying death counts, and genocide is not synonymous with gas chambers.
Sources:
"President Ahmadinejad: The transcript," MSNBC Online, September 20, 2006
"A Date With a Dangerous Mind" Time Online, September 18, 2006
"How Iran's Populist Lost His Popularity," Azadeh Moaveni, Time Online, September 18, 2006
"We Are Determined," Interview With Iran's President Ahmadinejad, Spiegel Online, May 30, 2006
"No Nation Should Have Superiority Over Others," Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, UN Address, September 21, 2006
"Ahmadinejad Has Caused Outrage in Washington and Jerusalem," Al Jazeera, December 14, 2005
"Iran: How Dangerous is Ahmadinejad?" Newsweek, February 13, 2006
"Son of the Ayatollah," Fouad Ajami, U.S. News and World Report, May 14, 2006
"Iran's Conduct Is Based on Dialogue and Rationality," USA Today interview published in Tehran Times, February 14, 2006
"Iran: Past the Paranoia," The American Conservative, June 4, 2007
______Michael K. Smith is the author of "Portraits of Empire," and "The Madness of King George," (illustrations by Matt Wuerker) from Common Courage Press
"Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the hero of every Muslim cab driver from Morocco to Malaysia because of his disreputable Holocaust denial."
-----Peter Hitchens, The American Conservative, June 4, 2007
"As to the Holocaust, I just raised a few questions. And I didn't receive any answers to my questions."
-----Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Time Magazine interview, September 18, 2006
"The populism of Ahmadinejad and Hizbollah is an alternative to civil society in the Middle East. By recruiting the poor and disenfranchised, they are closer to people's needs than governments are. Which is why they have this enormous following."
-----Jordan's Prince Hassan, BBC News, September 20, 2006
"Pro-Western governments in the Middle East may not like it (Iran and Hizbollah's power) but there is nothing they can do. American influence in the area is visibly declining."
-----World Affairs editor John Simpson, BBC News, September 20, 2006
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is slippery, gifted at spin and misdirection. He’s "hardline," an enigma, a mystical nutcase in an "apocalyptic mood;" he wouldn't mind detonating a nuclear weapon. He's cocky, bordering on arrogant, even Hitler-like, and prone to rambling rants. He seems to be a humorless technocrat, unhinged, and a stranger to the modern world. He's primitive, delusional, a true-believer in the "merciless" Ayatollah Khomeini, and above all, genocidal: he wants to wipe the Jews from the face of the earth. No, these are not the rash judgments of a demented rookie journalist, but the consensus view of an allegedly "value-neutral" U.S. journalistic profession.
Since the U.S. media have once again abdicated their responsibility to be reasonably objective, we are left to do our thinking for ourselves. Fair enough. Let us then examine some of the statements the "crazy" Ahmadinejad has made and see if they really fit the image of a loose cannon on deck, a menace to his own people and the entire world.
In a September 20, 2006 interview with MSNBC's Brian Williams Ahmadinejad pointed out that the allegedly peaceful intentions of the U.S. national security state can't be taken seriously: "We think that people who produce bombs - the atomic bomb cannot, in fact, speak of supporting world peace." He emphasized that Washington has been unremittingly hostile to Iran, not the other way around: "Iran has been under sanctions for 27 years. Even spare parts for aircraft are denied to us. . . . from day one (of the Iranian Revolution) the U.S. government has been against our nation. . . . it gave (support) to Saddam Hussein during the eight year war against Iran," in which "200,000 Iranian people, young men, died. Hundreds of thousands more were injured. . . . There was a terrorist group inside Iran, that, in fact, assassinated many of our authorities and officials. The president, the prime minister, the ministers. The head of the supreme court. Many members of parliament. Regular people. And America supported this group." Williams, contesting none of this, abruptly changed the topic to free speech.
Accused of being on the path of nuclear weaponry, Ahmadinejad not only denied it, but threw the ridiculous premise of Williams' question back in his face: " . . . I ask, did Iran build the atomic bomb and use it? Who are the ones who are testing the third generation of nuclear bombs? . . . We are against the atomic bomb . . . we are against killing people." Asked why Iran has large, long-range missiles if it has no intention of developing nuclear weapons, Ahmadinejad pointed to the absurdity of worrying about a non-nuclear state's missiles when many others in the region already have nuclear arsenals and Washington nuked two defenseless cities as soon as it developed the bomb. Ahmadinejad pressed Williams to resolve this contradictory premise, but the MSNBC host preferred to move on to a question about the Pope.
When the conversation turned to the threat of war over Iran's (legal) uranium enrichment program, Ahmadinejad responded that questions along this line would be better put to a U.S. politician, since the U.S. is the one threatening war. Washington's bellicose and domineering approach, Ahmadinejad added, is obsolete: "The world has changed . . . The time for world empires has ended. The U.S. government thinks that it's still the period after World War II . . . when they came out as victor. And enjoyed special rights. And can rule therefore, over the rest of the world . . . I think that we need to resort to logic, not war." Williams once again raised the specter of an Iranian nuclear weapon, but Ahmadinejad dismissed the question as a selective concern, since Washington not only hasn't criticized nuclear states in the region, but actively supports them. Israel alone has hundreds of nuclear bombs.
Inevitably, the subject of the Holocaust came up. Ahmadinejad politely attempted to raise three questions: (1) "Why is it that only a select group of those who were killed (in WWII) have become so prominent and important?" (2) "Why is it that those who ask questions (about the Holocaust) are persecuted?" (3) ". . . .if this (Holocaust) happened . . . why should the Palestinians pay for it now?" Williams answered the first question by saying that the Jews were killed by genocide, whereas the tens of millions of others killed were victims of war. Ahmadinejad responded that tens of millions of Christians and Muslims who were not in any way militarily involved in WWII were nonetheless targeted and killed. The moral difference between innocents dying in concentration camps and innocents blown up, burned alive, or atomized out of existence remained unexplored. Ahmadinejad's second and third questions, obviously relevant to the discussion, were likewise ignored.
Williams couldn't resist indulging the U.S. obsession with suicide bombers, asking what Ahmadinejad would feel as a father if one of his children decided to become one. Ahmadinejad pointed out that in a nation with few weapons joining a group of suicide bombers is the equivalent of volunteering to serve in the military, a major difference being, in the U.S. military's case, that the latter cannot plausibly be described as a self-defense force, since it operates thousands of miles beyond U.S. borders. He insisted that Iran, not the U.S., is the one with cause to worry about being attacked: " . . . you look around us. There are hundreds of forces and troops, hundreds of thousands of troops around us. Under the pretext of freedom and democracy. They don't value the people of the region. The people of the region know how to run their own affairs. It's regretful. This (intervention) coming from a group that supported Saddam for eight years. Saddam was the biggest dictator in our region. Even today, they support countries that have had no elections whatsoever. But still they speak of creating democracy through war. . . . It's impossible . . ."
Two days before his MSNBC interview, Ahmadinejad was interviewed by Time Magazine's Scott Macleod, who entitled his piece, "A Date With a Dangerous Mind." Among the "dangerous" sentiments Ahmadinejad expressed in that interview are the following; (1) "The U.S. government should not interfere in our affairs. They should live their own lives. They should serve the interests of the U.S. people. . . . Then there would be no problems . . ." (2) "We are opposed to the development of nuclear weapons. . . in my (2005) address to the U.N. General Assembly, I suggested that a committee should be set up in order to disarm all the countries that possess nuclear weapons. . ." (3) "Problems cannot be solved through bombs. Bombs are of little use today. We need logic." (4) Question: "Why do your supporters chant 'Death to America?'" Ahmadinejad: " . . . it means they hate aggression, and they hate bullying tactics, and they hate violations of the rights of nations and discrimination." (5) Question: "Are you ready to open direct negotiations with the U.S.?" Ahmadinejad: "It was the U.S. which broke up relations with us. We didn't take that position. . ." (6) Question: "You have been quoted as saying Israel should be wiped off the map. Was that merely rhetoric, or do you mean it?" Ahmadinejad: "Our suggestion is that the 5 million Palestinian refugees come back to their homes, and then the entire people on those lands hold a referendum and choose their own system of government. This is a democratic and popular way." (7) Question: "Do you believe the Jewish people have a right to their own state?" Ahmadinejad: "We do not oppose it. In any country in which the people are ready to vote for the Jews to come to power, it is up to them. . . . But Zionists are different from Jews."
In a May 30, 2006 interview with the Iranian president the German magazine Der Spiegel took issue with Ahmadinejad for regarding the Holocaust and the oppression of the Palestinians as aspects of a single issue. Der Spiegel's interviewer insisted that the fate of the Palestinians was "an entirely different issue." Ahmadinejad objected: "No, no, the roots of the Palestinian conflict must be sought in history. The Holocaust and Palestine are directly connected with one another. And if the Holocaust actually occurred, then you should permit impartial groups from the whole world to research this. Why do you restrict the research to a certain group?" His question went unanswered in preference for a query about whether he still believed the Holocaust was merely a "myth." He replied that belief should follow substantiation: "I will only accept something as truth if I am actually convinced of it." If this is extremism, we need more of it.
Ahmadinejad went on to point out to Der Spiegel that there is a divergence of views on the Holocaust, with orthodox Holocaust proponents rejecting direct debate in favor of dogged insistence on the allegedly racist motives of revisionists, which practice helps to insure that revisionist scholars in Europe continue to be imprisoned merely for stating what they think. He concluded that "an impartial group has to come together to investigate and render an opinion in this very important subject, because the clarification of this issue will contribute to the solution of global problems," in particular, the Palestine question. He added that there was nothing remotely odd about such a stance, since "normally, governments promote and support the work of researchers on historical events and do not put them in prison." In short, the people with explaining to do are not Holocaust revisionists, but those whose arguments are (literally) upheld by blasphemy laws and heresy trials.
The Der Spiegel interview makes clear that Ahmadinejad, like revisionists generally, does not, in fact, deny that Jews were brutally treated by the Nazis. After making his standard claim that, "If there really had been a Holocaust, Israel ought to be located in Europe, not in Palestine," he goes on to criticize Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, saying that, "aggression, occupation and a repetition of the Holocaust won't bring peace." (italics added) This implies that European Jewry was subjected to at least ethnic cleansing, if not outright genocide, depending on how one evaluates Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.
In a 2006 interview with Barbara Slavin of USA Today Ahmadinejad said that if the U.S. wants talks with Iran, "they have to take a hard look at their own behavior . . . They choose to threaten us and make false allegations and they want to impose their lifestyle on others and this is not acceptable." Asked why he keeps saying "upsetting" things about Israel and the Holocaust, he replied, "I don't know who is annoyed by revealing facts. But we know for sure that the people of Palestine are being killed every day with the Holocaust as a pretext." Presented with the naive query, "Why don't you go to Auschwitz and see the gas chambers for yourself?" he answered, "My going there will not solve the problem. I cannot take a trip back 60 years but researchers can do that." He conceded that the testimony of Holocaust survivors was relevant but insisted that "an impartial group should (also) go there and investigate." He concluded the interview with the sound observation that, "The wave of disgust toward U.S. policies is increasing. They only recognize their own friends, not others. We have in this world 6 billion people. It's not an American club. The majority are not Americans and are not interested to be Americans."
In his 2006 UN address Ahmadinejad outlined how the unresolved question of Palestine is bound up with the Holocaust: "Under the pretext of protecting some of the survivors of (WWII) the land of Palestine was occupied through war, aggression and the displacement of millions of its inhabitants." After being "placed under the control of some of the War survivors (European Jews)," who brought "even larger population groups from elsewhere in the world (non-European Jews) who had not been even affected by the Second World War," Israel's "government was established in the territory of others with a population collected from across the world at the expense of driving millions of the rightful inhabitants of the land into a diaspora and homelessness." Born of dispossession, the Jewish state could never make itself belong: ". . . from its inception, that regime (Israel) has been a constant source of threat and insecurity in the Middle East region, waging war and spilling blood and impeding the progress of regional countries." The U.N., supposedly dedicated to peace, continues to ignore Israel's atrocities. "People are being bombarded in their own homes and their children murdered in their own streets and alleys. But no authority, not even the Security Council, can afford them any support or protection." This is not by chance.
Addressing Israel's 2006 Lebanon invasion, Ahmadinejad tore away the U.S. mask of "disinterested" diplomacy and accused Washington of collaboration in aggression: "For thirty-three long days, the Lebanese lived under the barrage of fire and bombs and close to 1.5 million of them were displaced; meanwhile some members of the Security Council practically chose a path that provided ample opportunity for the aggressor to achieve its objectives militarily." Those entrusted with preserving the peace proved impotent. "We witnessed that the Security Council of the United Nations was practically incapacitated by certain powers to even call for a ceasefire. The Security Council sat idly by for so many days, witnessing the cruel scenes of atrocities against the Lebanese. . . Why? . . . . the answer is self-evident. When the power behind the hostilities is itself a permanent member of the Security Council, how then can this Council fulfill its responsibilities?"
Denouncing a flawed U.N. structure that privileges a handful of Security Council members over the vast membership of the General Assembly, Ahmadinejad complained that, "certain powers equate themselves with the international community, and consider their decisions superseding that of over 180 countries." These powers, most conspicuously the U.S. and Britain, have renounced reciprocal dialogue and mutual compromise: "If they have differences with a nation or state, they drag it to the Security Council and as claimants, arrogate to themselves simultaneously the roles of prosecutor, judge and executioner. Is this a just order?" The U.S., far in the lead in excercising Security Council veto rights, is destroying the legitimacy of the U.N. by insisting that its views be accepted as universal truths :" . . . the direct relation between the abuse of the veto and the erosion of the legitimacy and effectiveness of the Council has now been clearly and undeniably established." Without a democratization of power, justice is unobtainable: "We cannot, and should not, expect the eradication, or even containment, of injustice, imposition and oppression without reforming the structure and working methods of the Council." Furthermore, the victims of the international capitalist order, excluded from consideration from the beginning, are also entitled to a share of power: " . . . the Non-Aligned Movement, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the African continent should each have a representative as a permanent member of the Security Council, with veto privilege [in order to] prevent further trampling of the rights of nations."
Much as these views may be disliked, however, Ahmadinejad is the controversy he is because of his remarks on the Holocaust, the mother of all dogmas. Be that as it may, however, there is really nothing objectionable in what he has said on the topic. On December 14, 2005 Al Jazeera quoted Ahmadinejad as follows: "They have fabricated a legend under the name Massacre of the Jews, and they hold it higher than God himself, religion itself and the prophets themselves. If somebody in their country questions God, nobody says anything, but if somebody denies the myth of the massacre of the Jews, the Zionist loudspeakers and the governments in the pay of Zionism will start to scream." Allowing for imprecise translation, this appears to be the literal truth, which, one should again note, does not rule out that Jews were viciously brutalized by Nazi policies. The "legend" has to do with gas chambers, for which no forensic evidence exists, and an alleged industrial assembly line of Jewish death, carried out in response to a secret order of extermination from Adolf Hitler, as well as what is said to be 6 million Jewish victims of this process. In spite of much hysterical insistence to the contrary, there is no reason to suppose that skepticism about gas chambers, an assembly line of death, and the sacred 6 million figure, necessarily leads to the conclusion that Jews were treated well in Nazi Germany. Nor has Ahmadinejad been shown to have made such a case. Abominable oppression and suffering take many forms, with widely varying death counts, and genocide is not synonymous with gas chambers.
Sources:
"President Ahmadinejad: The transcript," MSNBC Online, September 20, 2006
"A Date With a Dangerous Mind" Time Online, September 18, 2006
"How Iran's Populist Lost His Popularity," Azadeh Moaveni, Time Online, September 18, 2006
"We Are Determined," Interview With Iran's President Ahmadinejad, Spiegel Online, May 30, 2006
"No Nation Should Have Superiority Over Others," Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, UN Address, September 21, 2006
"Ahmadinejad Has Caused Outrage in Washington and Jerusalem," Al Jazeera, December 14, 2005
"Iran: How Dangerous is Ahmadinejad?" Newsweek, February 13, 2006
"Son of the Ayatollah," Fouad Ajami, U.S. News and World Report, May 14, 2006
"Iran's Conduct Is Based on Dialogue and Rationality," USA Today interview published in Tehran Times, February 14, 2006
"Iran: Past the Paranoia," The American Conservative, June 4, 2007
______Michael K. Smith is the author of "Portraits of Empire," and "The Madness of King George," (illustrations by Matt Wuerker) from Common Courage Press
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Ponzi Capitalism
Charles Ponzi was criminalized in the 1920s for using people’s money to pay interest to themselves as well as others, all of them being invested in something that did not really exist. Their profit resulted from unprincipled capital accumulation. Just like what the market does when it sells what it calls Derivatives now , Ponzi’s investors derived value from other investors, until the number of gullible people declined once the ruling class squelched his small time imitation before their own schemes were seen to be much bolder methods of producing money out of thin air. The credit creation which has supported our consumption binge for many years now is merely an updated, far more vast and dangerous expression of Ponzi’s hustle, carried to global extremes.
Purists can deny that the present shakeup in the home mortgage sector is anything like a Ponzi Scheme, because an actual product exists: a home. But rare is the buyer in America who sees real estate simply as a procedure to acquire shelter. Rather, it has become a money making proposition in which the commodity, and especially the speculative paper that is its tenuous foundation, changes hands often, sees its value fluctuate, and all with no more than religious faith in a steady stream of new investors to buy the paper.
Once a mortgage is taken on by a hopeful future home owner, it passes through many financial hands, bundled and rebundled to create greater packages of funny money that exists only in the speculative minds of manipulators who make some people rich, and most people debtors.
This market division is only a part of the casino credit scheme that has been propping up capitalism in America for the past generation. It may be in the process of falling apart, and even though many home owners - mostly debtors who own nothing - won’t be immediately affected, all Americans will ultimately pay a price. As is usually the case, when serious contradictions cause chaos in the Ponzi Scheme that goes by the cosmetic name of contemporary American Capitalism.
The crisis in the mortgage industry is part of the credit colossus which is showing signs of collapsing on our heads. An economy carrying trillions of dollars in global debt can only be maintained by bludgeoning opposition into submission, as in Iraq and Yugoslavia, while injecting daily doses of funny money into the veins of a monetary monster that is uniting much of the world in opposition . That is happening as the empire sinks deeper into indebtedness which its leaders think can never be collected by less powerful global forces. They don’t seem to notice more opposition than their massive but over extended military can hope to subdue without destroying the planet. Of course if that crisis occurs, the more fanatic among them foresee being swept up as brethren, by Jesus, or protected as Chosen, by his dad .
In a two day period of recent panic, the central bank created some 70 billion dollars and placed a finger in the dike that threatened to burst and flood Wall Street. There will be many more of these emergency transfusions , but we may soon see an even deadlier economic tsunami that will affect all of us , and not just some of us . It’s long past time for people to learn about their economy, not only if they wish to make changes for the future, but if they wish to have a future at all.
The thousands suffering layoffs when mortgage firms went bankrupt are the usual product of failed enterprise, but though the unemployed are weapons in capital’s war on wages, too much of it means little or no shopping by those new victims of the market. And that means disaster for an economy which has been thriving on massive credit spending to consume the wasteful output of a production system that spans the globe, burying less developed societies in death and debt while it empties wallets and minds in the more developed, all to benefit a minority gorging itself on profits from the majority’s loss. But increasing social and environmental destruction is creating a global backlash to the rule of capital, and not just from outside the USA.
The trillions spent to destroy Iraq and threaten worse for Iran are denied the nation’s health and infrastructure, bringing it closer to falling apart at the seams if this military and monetary madness isn’t stopped. Major candidates striving to replace the incompetent boob whose term wont expire soon enough do not inspire confidence, but growing public disgust with political and environmental reality brings some hope.
Ponzi’s populist hustle offered ordinary people a chance to get in on the profit making of market capitalism, but the present scourge of the planet needs the intervention of ordinary people in opposition to that system. They will have to act as a real majority, for the first time in U.S. history. Americans need to watch what’s going on in some other nations, but free from the brain numbing filter of our political media. What we are taught to see as insurrection or terrorism often represents democracy in its infancy, and perhaps better developed than in more materially comfortable places where the illusion of freedom reigns, but the reality is a dictatorship of corporate wealth.
If Americans don't take democratic control of their country, they could suffer a much worse fate than Ponzi, who only served a few years in jail. That means paying close attention to what our economy really is, and not believing myths about what it’s supposed to be. If we don’t come to grips with a reality that is destructive of all our futures, we may have to pay the ultimate price of capital’s punishment, not as individuals but as a society . We need a political form of crisis intervention, democratically practiced, and very soon.
Purists can deny that the present shakeup in the home mortgage sector is anything like a Ponzi Scheme, because an actual product exists: a home. But rare is the buyer in America who sees real estate simply as a procedure to acquire shelter. Rather, it has become a money making proposition in which the commodity, and especially the speculative paper that is its tenuous foundation, changes hands often, sees its value fluctuate, and all with no more than religious faith in a steady stream of new investors to buy the paper.
Once a mortgage is taken on by a hopeful future home owner, it passes through many financial hands, bundled and rebundled to create greater packages of funny money that exists only in the speculative minds of manipulators who make some people rich, and most people debtors.
This market division is only a part of the casino credit scheme that has been propping up capitalism in America for the past generation. It may be in the process of falling apart, and even though many home owners - mostly debtors who own nothing - won’t be immediately affected, all Americans will ultimately pay a price. As is usually the case, when serious contradictions cause chaos in the Ponzi Scheme that goes by the cosmetic name of contemporary American Capitalism.
The crisis in the mortgage industry is part of the credit colossus which is showing signs of collapsing on our heads. An economy carrying trillions of dollars in global debt can only be maintained by bludgeoning opposition into submission, as in Iraq and Yugoslavia, while injecting daily doses of funny money into the veins of a monetary monster that is uniting much of the world in opposition . That is happening as the empire sinks deeper into indebtedness which its leaders think can never be collected by less powerful global forces. They don’t seem to notice more opposition than their massive but over extended military can hope to subdue without destroying the planet. Of course if that crisis occurs, the more fanatic among them foresee being swept up as brethren, by Jesus, or protected as Chosen, by his dad .
In a two day period of recent panic, the central bank created some 70 billion dollars and placed a finger in the dike that threatened to burst and flood Wall Street. There will be many more of these emergency transfusions , but we may soon see an even deadlier economic tsunami that will affect all of us , and not just some of us . It’s long past time for people to learn about their economy, not only if they wish to make changes for the future, but if they wish to have a future at all.
The thousands suffering layoffs when mortgage firms went bankrupt are the usual product of failed enterprise, but though the unemployed are weapons in capital’s war on wages, too much of it means little or no shopping by those new victims of the market. And that means disaster for an economy which has been thriving on massive credit spending to consume the wasteful output of a production system that spans the globe, burying less developed societies in death and debt while it empties wallets and minds in the more developed, all to benefit a minority gorging itself on profits from the majority’s loss. But increasing social and environmental destruction is creating a global backlash to the rule of capital, and not just from outside the USA.
The trillions spent to destroy Iraq and threaten worse for Iran are denied the nation’s health and infrastructure, bringing it closer to falling apart at the seams if this military and monetary madness isn’t stopped. Major candidates striving to replace the incompetent boob whose term wont expire soon enough do not inspire confidence, but growing public disgust with political and environmental reality brings some hope.
Ponzi’s populist hustle offered ordinary people a chance to get in on the profit making of market capitalism, but the present scourge of the planet needs the intervention of ordinary people in opposition to that system. They will have to act as a real majority, for the first time in U.S. history. Americans need to watch what’s going on in some other nations, but free from the brain numbing filter of our political media. What we are taught to see as insurrection or terrorism often represents democracy in its infancy, and perhaps better developed than in more materially comfortable places where the illusion of freedom reigns, but the reality is a dictatorship of corporate wealth.
If Americans don't take democratic control of their country, they could suffer a much worse fate than Ponzi, who only served a few years in jail. That means paying close attention to what our economy really is, and not believing myths about what it’s supposed to be. If we don’t come to grips with a reality that is destructive of all our futures, we may have to pay the ultimate price of capital’s punishment, not as individuals but as a society . We need a political form of crisis intervention, democratically practiced, and very soon.
Monday, August 6, 2007
BULLETIN...BULLETIN
Martin Bohrman Alive!
Simon Wiesenthal Center Tracks Down Hitler's Private Secretary Posing as ADL chief Abraham Foxman, says assumed identity fomented anti-Semitism "beyond Fuehrer's wildest dreams"
Foxman never existed , proving theories entertained by those who said “this guy can't be real”...
ADL closes doors, bank accounts and phone lines...
Bohrman says obnoxious Foxman character was found believable , thereby proving his innocence.
Israel charges identity genocide
Liberals remain dumb, conservatives stay deaf, rest of congress continues blind...
Southern Poverty Law center begins new fund raising drive to stop Master Race from masquerading as Chosen People.
Dershowitz to prosecute Bohrman and defend Foxman on grounds of diminished capacity and suffering caused by painful confusion over identical last syllable of names
Holocaust industry shares drop ..
Market consumed by hysteria,
Consumers gripped by fear
Bush calls for war on mental terror, anti-Semitism and Jimmy Carter.
Legalienate was able to obtain this brief interview :
Legalienate: How were you able to maintain your disguise?
Bohrman: It wasn't easy, sometimes I tired of being a Nazi, but my best protection was to continually promote Jewish supremacy, which bred the anti-Semitic backlash I live for . . .
Legalienate: Did anyone ever suspect your real identity?
Bohrman: Only once, when I compared Elie Wiesel to Pinocchio.
Legalienate: What's been the general reaction to your "outing"?
Bohrman: Shock, disbelief, hysteria, offers to do a book, movie and TV series, and a Hollywood proposal to nominate me for an Academy Award .
Legalienate: What are your current plans?
Bohrman: I want to found a Holocaust Museum in Mecca.
Legalienate: Anything else?
Bohrman: I’d like to complete my 64th edition of "The New Anti-Semitism."
Legalienate: Any advice for young people?
Bohrman: You can never have enough enemies. Dream big, blame others for your faults, and cash in.
Stay tuned for further details at six, following televised executions of Holocaust Deniers and Barry Bonds
Simon Wiesenthal Center Tracks Down Hitler's Private Secretary Posing as ADL chief Abraham Foxman, says assumed identity fomented anti-Semitism "beyond Fuehrer's wildest dreams"
Foxman never existed , proving theories entertained by those who said “this guy can't be real”...
ADL closes doors, bank accounts and phone lines...
Bohrman says obnoxious Foxman character was found believable , thereby proving his innocence.
Israel charges identity genocide
Liberals remain dumb, conservatives stay deaf, rest of congress continues blind...
Southern Poverty Law center begins new fund raising drive to stop Master Race from masquerading as Chosen People.
Dershowitz to prosecute Bohrman and defend Foxman on grounds of diminished capacity and suffering caused by painful confusion over identical last syllable of names
Holocaust industry shares drop ..
Market consumed by hysteria,
Consumers gripped by fear
Bush calls for war on mental terror, anti-Semitism and Jimmy Carter.
Legalienate was able to obtain this brief interview :
Legalienate: How were you able to maintain your disguise?
Bohrman: It wasn't easy, sometimes I tired of being a Nazi, but my best protection was to continually promote Jewish supremacy, which bred the anti-Semitic backlash I live for . . .
Legalienate: Did anyone ever suspect your real identity?
Bohrman: Only once, when I compared Elie Wiesel to Pinocchio.
Legalienate: What's been the general reaction to your "outing"?
Bohrman: Shock, disbelief, hysteria, offers to do a book, movie and TV series, and a Hollywood proposal to nominate me for an Academy Award .
Legalienate: What are your current plans?
Bohrman: I want to found a Holocaust Museum in Mecca.
Legalienate: Anything else?
Bohrman: I’d like to complete my 64th edition of "The New Anti-Semitism."
Legalienate: Any advice for young people?
Bohrman: You can never have enough enemies. Dream big, blame others for your faults, and cash in.
Stay tuned for further details at six, following televised executions of Holocaust Deniers and Barry Bonds
Saturday, August 4, 2007
Imperial Demon Watch: Hugo Chavez
Why does Washington hate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez? Let us count the ways.
1. He is fearless in debate.
He excoriates his imperial enemies as worms, liars, fools, and worse. In 2006 in New York, he addressed the United Nations the day after George Bush had given a speech there, daring to state what many felt but none had publicly uttered before: "The devil came here yesterday. And it smells of sulfur still today." He explained: "As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share his nostrums to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world. An Alfred Hitchcock movie could use it as a scenario. I would even propose a title: 'The Devil's Recipe.'" While delivering his sensational commentary he waved a book by U.S.-dissident author Noam Chomsky in the air. Chomsky's searing critique of U.S. lawlessness soared onto Amazon's best-seller list.
On another occasion Chavez said that Bush "walks like this cowboy John Wayne. He doesn't have the slightest idea of politics . . . He's a sick man, full of complexes."
Mexican President Felipe Calderon proposed to debate Chavez, but only if he agreed to refrain from the snappy come-backs that make his opponents' subservience to Washington dramatically apparent. Bluntly stated truths have a tendency to be perceived as rhetorical tricks by the servants of Empire.
Chavez dismissed ex-president of Peru, Alejandro Toledo, as a lackey and lapdog of Empire. The Venezuelan president's relations with Peru's political elite had soured after he supported leftist Ollanta Humala against Alan Garcia, whom Chavez dismissed as the "candidate of the Empire, corrupt and an utter thief." When Toledo joined with Mexican President Vicente Fox and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar in an anti-Chavez front, Chavez attacked them on the basis that they "crawl drooling in front of the Empire," adding that, "all they produce in me is pity and nausea."
When Jose Maria Insulza, Secretary General of the Organization of American States, had the nerve to say that Chavez should reconsider his decision to revoke RCTV's broadcast license for having supported the anti-Chavez coup of 2002, Chavez responded, "Well, he's a complete asshole, from the 'a' to the 'e,' Dr. Insulza is pathetic, he should resign."
Chavez has also singled out former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, who joined President Bush in the Azores to help deliver his capitulate-or-die ultimatum to Saddam Hussein just prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and also participated in Washington's viciously anti-Chavez propaganda campaign. Says Chavez: "This (Aznar) is of the Adolf Hitler ilk, a true fascist of the global right-wing, a lackey of George Bush, he's a guy that inspires pity and nausea."
After the prelate had warned of increasing authoritarianism in Venezuela, Chavez called Honduran Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriquez Maradiaga a parrot and clown of the Empire. Then he apologized, inviting the Cardinal to visit Venezuela and see for himself that he didn't know what he was talking about.
In July, Chavez lashed out at Venezuelan bishops after the president of the Venezuelan Episcopal Conference, Monsenor Ubaldo Santana, expressed their concern that Venezuelan constitutional reform might be developed by a "closed group" without the participation of "all the people." Chavez shot back that the 1999 Bolivarian Constitution dictates that "any reform" of the Constitution's text requires ratification by popular referendum, which ought to be known by the directors of the Episcopal Conference. "You (bishops)," said Chavez, "are ignoramuses, or corrupters, liars, deceivers . . . monsenors, read the Constitution if you're speaking out of ignorance . . . and if you're doing it out of corruption, you should take off your cassock." Chavez confessed to being "repelled" by "cynicism so great," which, in his judgment, is characteristic of the Venezuelan Catholic hierarchy.
Chavez has even taken on the Pope, accusing him of Holocaust Denial. The Pope had declared that Christianity was never imposed by force in the Americas, nor had it alienated indigenous peoples from their native cultures. Chavez wasn't buying it: "Here in America occurred something much worse than the Jewish Holocaust in the Second World War . . . nobody can deny it, not even His Holiness can come here to our own land and deny the indigenous Holocaust . . . they died by the millions."
2. He prioritizes need over greed.
This is unforgivable, since it means that foreign investors are not allowed to ignore the social consequences of their investments, a great irritant for those accustomed to a steady flow of profits from regions teeming with hungry and diseased people. In Venezuela, 80% of the population is poor, with blacks and Indians making up a disproportionate share of the impoverished majority. "Chavez," observes British journalist John Pilger, "is a threat because he offers the alternative of a decent society."
Thanks to Chavez and his Bolivarian Revolution, a million Venezuelan children from shanty-towns now get a free education from the state, over a million formerly illiterate adults have been taught to read and write, secondary education has been made available to a quarter million children who had previously been excluded from this privilege because of social status, and almost the entire Venezuelan population is literate for the first time in its history. Moreover, ten thousand Cuban doctors have transformed the health system, helping set up 11,000 neighborhood clinics while the health budget has tripled. Chavez has also extended financial support to small business, built new homes for the poor and middle class, and enacted an Agrarian Reform Law that has distributed over two million hectares to tens of thousands of Venezuelan families.
In a speech to the Venezuelan Legislature in January, Chavez hailed his economic achievements, among them nationalization of the electricity and energy sectors in the face of "naked and Dracula-like imperialism." He highlighted a 10.3% growth rate in the national economy for 2006, which had allowed, he said, a 16.3% increase in consumption and a 31.5% increase in public and private investment. He applauded increases in tax revenue and the minimum wage, as well as infrastructure projects like roads and train routes, and the decline of unemployment to 8.8%. He pointed out that Venezuela could pay off its national debt all at once if it wanted to, since it doesn't represent "even one third of our Gross Domestic Product, whereas the U.S. debt is five times its GDP." He observed that "it isn't very convenient today to hold reserves in dollars," and said he had proposed to his colleagues in the region to "work towards a Latin American currency." He pronounced dependence on the U.S. a bad risk. "If that giant falls, the crash will shake the world," so that "the less tied to it we are, the better." He predicted that U.S. Empire didn't have much time left and had already started to resemble what Mao called "a paper tiger."
Nevertheless, Chavez is not without sympathy for the U.S. public. He has an ongoing program to provide cheap heating oil for poor people in the U.S., and recently stated that he would assist a revolutionary movement if it emerged in the country. Observing Washington's astronomical budget and trade deficits, he said that, "there could be a revolution in the United States," adding that if it comes, "we'll help them."
3. He is immensely popular.
From the very beginning Chavez has striven to make his every initiative subject to the will of the people. The people have repaid him with overwhelming support.
In 1998, Chavez was elected with 56% of the vote. The following year a new Constitution was drawn up and approved by 88% of voters. In 2000, Chavez was re-elected with 59% of the vote. In 2002, Chavez was ousted from power for two days in a coup, but then rescued by the poor, with thousands of shanty-town residents pouring down into the streets of Caracas demanding his reinstatement. In 2004, the Venezuelan opposition attempted to oust him again with a recall vote, but Chavez won handily 58% to 42% in an election that Jimmy Carter called one of the freest he had ever seen. In 2006, Chavez was elected to another six-year term with an overwhelming 63% of the vote. He has recently announced that the revolutionary majority has sufficient support to remain in power until 2021 at least.
But perhaps more alarming than his domestic support is his international popularity. Demonstrators in the Philippines carry portraits of Chavez. Peasants in West Bengal come out in the tens of thousands to greet him in Calcutta. Hizbollah leaders in South Lebanon call him "our brother Chavez." Interviewed once by Faisal al-Qasim on Al Jazeera's, "The Opposite Direction," Chavez's to-the-point crispness and confident defiance of Empire won him considerable admiration among the show's 26 million viewers. Thousands of e-mails poured in to the network, the bulk of them asking, said a senior Al Jazeera journalist, when will the Arab world produce a leader like Chavez?
Perhaps one reason for his popularity is that Chavez, unlike the servants of Empire, is not addicted to holding office and swears he will depart the moment the people no longer support him. "I have always said that the day the people no longer want me, I won't cry, I'll leave." The security precautions U.S. hostility forces him to take deprive him of a personal life, and the permanent threat of assassination is hardly a pleasant preoccupation. He points out that the CIA is well equipped everywhere and that Fidel Castro alone "is a survivor of more than 600 attempts" on his life. "With today's technology," he says, "the risk is much greater" for anti-imperialist leaders. He calls the CIA "the most perfect killing machine" ever devised, with a mission to "destabilize without rest."
4. He commands and demands respect.
Unlike leaders in the U.S., who consider the general population a vulgar mass fit only to be bombarded with inane sound bites, Chavez actually respects the will of the people and strives on every occasion to make his policies accord with it. Moreover, he demands that visiting foreigners show similar respect, recently instructing his Vice-President and his foreign and interior ministers to expel foreigners that speak badly of the democratic government. "Any foreigner that comes here to denigrate us as Venezuelans, our free, democratic, and legitimate government of Venezuela, has to be, with all respect, dropped off at Caracas International Airport and told: 'Here is your suitcase, sir, get out of this country.'"
Chavez made these remarks the day after Manuel Espino, the leader of the National Action Party of Mexico, said in Caracas that the Venezuelan government was an example of the "demagogic tendency, populist and authoritarian, which infringes on the liberties and fundamental rights of the citizens." He accused Chavez of planning to stay in power forever and called his non-renewal of RCTV's broadcast license "an outrage." Chavez, criticizing the failure of his government to respond to the attack, said that, "No foreigner, whoever he may be, can come here to attack us. Whoever comes with that in mind has to be thrown out of the country. It can't be allowed, it's a matter of dignity."
5. He's a socialist.
A close friend of Fidel Castro, Chavez makes no bones about the fact that the Bolivarian Revolution is committed to "21st Century socialism." In fact, in a ceremony swearing in nine new leaders of the Bolivarian Armed Forces in the Caracas Military Academy on July 18, Chavez said that in Venezuela there's no longer an issue of socialism or capitalism, but rather what kind of socialism. "We aren't going to duplicate any model. . .," he said, adding that "without doubt it will rise on a foundation of authentic democracy . . . Democratic, because it is rooted in the sovereignty of the people, not in a man, a 'caudillo,' or the State." He swore that "we are going to dedicate ourselves with great effort to critical investigation and thought, in order to avoid a socialism that "degenerates." He said Bolivarian socialism is a Christian socialism that at the same time respects atheists, and an ecological socialism possessed of ethical values. His outgoing minister Raul Baduel said that "we should separate ourselves from the Marxist orthodoxy that considered democracy with its division of powers as merely an instrument of bourgeois domination," adding that "they also committed errors of an economic nature in socialist countries," such that it was necessary "to be on guard so as not to repeat them."
When the Soviet Union collapsed to much fanfare in the West, Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano declared that giddy capitalist triumphalists were burying the wrong corpse - socialist idealism rather than the ossified Soviet bureaucracy. Chavez has dug the former up and proven it isn't really dead. How can Washington not hate him for that?
Sources:
"Chavez destaca logros economicos y reitera empeno socialista y nacionalizador," Univision En Linea, 13 de enero de 2007
"Chavez pidio al Papa disculparse," Univision En Linea, 19 de mayo de 2007
"Chavez, amado por su pueblo," Univision En Linea, 4 de junio de 2007
"Chavez llamo 'ignorantes, perversos y mentirosos' a obispos venezolanos," Univision En Linea, 3 de julio de 2007
"Nuevos jefes militares juran cargos al grito de 'patria, socialismo o muerte,'" Univision En Linea, 18 de julio de 2007
"Chavez confirma buscara reeleccion y dice que no llorara si el pueblo lo echa," Univision En Linea, 22 de julio de 2007
"Chavez ordena la expulsion de extranjeros que hablen mal de su gobierno," Univision En Linea, 22 de julio de 2007
"Chavez - de lengua suelta," http://www.univision.com/content/content.jhtml?cid=1175849&pagenum=11
"The Meaning of 21st Century Socialism for Venezuela," Gregory Wilpert, Venezuela Analysis, July 11, 2006
John Pilger, The Guardian, May 13, 2006
"Timeline: Hugo Chavez," BBC News Online, November 24, 2006
"Chavez Wins Venezuela Reelection," BBC News Online, December 4, 2006
"Timeline Venezuela - A chronology of key events," BBC News Online, June 28, 2007
"Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution," by Richard Gott
"Pirates of the Caribbean - Axis of Hope," by Tariq Ali
1. He is fearless in debate.
He excoriates his imperial enemies as worms, liars, fools, and worse. In 2006 in New York, he addressed the United Nations the day after George Bush had given a speech there, daring to state what many felt but none had publicly uttered before: "The devil came here yesterday. And it smells of sulfur still today." He explained: "As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share his nostrums to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world. An Alfred Hitchcock movie could use it as a scenario. I would even propose a title: 'The Devil's Recipe.'" While delivering his sensational commentary he waved a book by U.S.-dissident author Noam Chomsky in the air. Chomsky's searing critique of U.S. lawlessness soared onto Amazon's best-seller list.
On another occasion Chavez said that Bush "walks like this cowboy John Wayne. He doesn't have the slightest idea of politics . . . He's a sick man, full of complexes."
Mexican President Felipe Calderon proposed to debate Chavez, but only if he agreed to refrain from the snappy come-backs that make his opponents' subservience to Washington dramatically apparent. Bluntly stated truths have a tendency to be perceived as rhetorical tricks by the servants of Empire.
Chavez dismissed ex-president of Peru, Alejandro Toledo, as a lackey and lapdog of Empire. The Venezuelan president's relations with Peru's political elite had soured after he supported leftist Ollanta Humala against Alan Garcia, whom Chavez dismissed as the "candidate of the Empire, corrupt and an utter thief." When Toledo joined with Mexican President Vicente Fox and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar in an anti-Chavez front, Chavez attacked them on the basis that they "crawl drooling in front of the Empire," adding that, "all they produce in me is pity and nausea."
When Jose Maria Insulza, Secretary General of the Organization of American States, had the nerve to say that Chavez should reconsider his decision to revoke RCTV's broadcast license for having supported the anti-Chavez coup of 2002, Chavez responded, "Well, he's a complete asshole, from the 'a' to the 'e,' Dr. Insulza is pathetic, he should resign."
Chavez has also singled out former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, who joined President Bush in the Azores to help deliver his capitulate-or-die ultimatum to Saddam Hussein just prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and also participated in Washington's viciously anti-Chavez propaganda campaign. Says Chavez: "This (Aznar) is of the Adolf Hitler ilk, a true fascist of the global right-wing, a lackey of George Bush, he's a guy that inspires pity and nausea."
After the prelate had warned of increasing authoritarianism in Venezuela, Chavez called Honduran Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriquez Maradiaga a parrot and clown of the Empire. Then he apologized, inviting the Cardinal to visit Venezuela and see for himself that he didn't know what he was talking about.
In July, Chavez lashed out at Venezuelan bishops after the president of the Venezuelan Episcopal Conference, Monsenor Ubaldo Santana, expressed their concern that Venezuelan constitutional reform might be developed by a "closed group" without the participation of "all the people." Chavez shot back that the 1999 Bolivarian Constitution dictates that "any reform" of the Constitution's text requires ratification by popular referendum, which ought to be known by the directors of the Episcopal Conference. "You (bishops)," said Chavez, "are ignoramuses, or corrupters, liars, deceivers . . . monsenors, read the Constitution if you're speaking out of ignorance . . . and if you're doing it out of corruption, you should take off your cassock." Chavez confessed to being "repelled" by "cynicism so great," which, in his judgment, is characteristic of the Venezuelan Catholic hierarchy.
Chavez has even taken on the Pope, accusing him of Holocaust Denial. The Pope had declared that Christianity was never imposed by force in the Americas, nor had it alienated indigenous peoples from their native cultures. Chavez wasn't buying it: "Here in America occurred something much worse than the Jewish Holocaust in the Second World War . . . nobody can deny it, not even His Holiness can come here to our own land and deny the indigenous Holocaust . . . they died by the millions."
2. He prioritizes need over greed.
This is unforgivable, since it means that foreign investors are not allowed to ignore the social consequences of their investments, a great irritant for those accustomed to a steady flow of profits from regions teeming with hungry and diseased people. In Venezuela, 80% of the population is poor, with blacks and Indians making up a disproportionate share of the impoverished majority. "Chavez," observes British journalist John Pilger, "is a threat because he offers the alternative of a decent society."
Thanks to Chavez and his Bolivarian Revolution, a million Venezuelan children from shanty-towns now get a free education from the state, over a million formerly illiterate adults have been taught to read and write, secondary education has been made available to a quarter million children who had previously been excluded from this privilege because of social status, and almost the entire Venezuelan population is literate for the first time in its history. Moreover, ten thousand Cuban doctors have transformed the health system, helping set up 11,000 neighborhood clinics while the health budget has tripled. Chavez has also extended financial support to small business, built new homes for the poor and middle class, and enacted an Agrarian Reform Law that has distributed over two million hectares to tens of thousands of Venezuelan families.
In a speech to the Venezuelan Legislature in January, Chavez hailed his economic achievements, among them nationalization of the electricity and energy sectors in the face of "naked and Dracula-like imperialism." He highlighted a 10.3% growth rate in the national economy for 2006, which had allowed, he said, a 16.3% increase in consumption and a 31.5% increase in public and private investment. He applauded increases in tax revenue and the minimum wage, as well as infrastructure projects like roads and train routes, and the decline of unemployment to 8.8%. He pointed out that Venezuela could pay off its national debt all at once if it wanted to, since it doesn't represent "even one third of our Gross Domestic Product, whereas the U.S. debt is five times its GDP." He observed that "it isn't very convenient today to hold reserves in dollars," and said he had proposed to his colleagues in the region to "work towards a Latin American currency." He pronounced dependence on the U.S. a bad risk. "If that giant falls, the crash will shake the world," so that "the less tied to it we are, the better." He predicted that U.S. Empire didn't have much time left and had already started to resemble what Mao called "a paper tiger."
Nevertheless, Chavez is not without sympathy for the U.S. public. He has an ongoing program to provide cheap heating oil for poor people in the U.S., and recently stated that he would assist a revolutionary movement if it emerged in the country. Observing Washington's astronomical budget and trade deficits, he said that, "there could be a revolution in the United States," adding that if it comes, "we'll help them."
3. He is immensely popular.
From the very beginning Chavez has striven to make his every initiative subject to the will of the people. The people have repaid him with overwhelming support.
In 1998, Chavez was elected with 56% of the vote. The following year a new Constitution was drawn up and approved by 88% of voters. In 2000, Chavez was re-elected with 59% of the vote. In 2002, Chavez was ousted from power for two days in a coup, but then rescued by the poor, with thousands of shanty-town residents pouring down into the streets of Caracas demanding his reinstatement. In 2004, the Venezuelan opposition attempted to oust him again with a recall vote, but Chavez won handily 58% to 42% in an election that Jimmy Carter called one of the freest he had ever seen. In 2006, Chavez was elected to another six-year term with an overwhelming 63% of the vote. He has recently announced that the revolutionary majority has sufficient support to remain in power until 2021 at least.
But perhaps more alarming than his domestic support is his international popularity. Demonstrators in the Philippines carry portraits of Chavez. Peasants in West Bengal come out in the tens of thousands to greet him in Calcutta. Hizbollah leaders in South Lebanon call him "our brother Chavez." Interviewed once by Faisal al-Qasim on Al Jazeera's, "The Opposite Direction," Chavez's to-the-point crispness and confident defiance of Empire won him considerable admiration among the show's 26 million viewers. Thousands of e-mails poured in to the network, the bulk of them asking, said a senior Al Jazeera journalist, when will the Arab world produce a leader like Chavez?
Perhaps one reason for his popularity is that Chavez, unlike the servants of Empire, is not addicted to holding office and swears he will depart the moment the people no longer support him. "I have always said that the day the people no longer want me, I won't cry, I'll leave." The security precautions U.S. hostility forces him to take deprive him of a personal life, and the permanent threat of assassination is hardly a pleasant preoccupation. He points out that the CIA is well equipped everywhere and that Fidel Castro alone "is a survivor of more than 600 attempts" on his life. "With today's technology," he says, "the risk is much greater" for anti-imperialist leaders. He calls the CIA "the most perfect killing machine" ever devised, with a mission to "destabilize without rest."
4. He commands and demands respect.
Unlike leaders in the U.S., who consider the general population a vulgar mass fit only to be bombarded with inane sound bites, Chavez actually respects the will of the people and strives on every occasion to make his policies accord with it. Moreover, he demands that visiting foreigners show similar respect, recently instructing his Vice-President and his foreign and interior ministers to expel foreigners that speak badly of the democratic government. "Any foreigner that comes here to denigrate us as Venezuelans, our free, democratic, and legitimate government of Venezuela, has to be, with all respect, dropped off at Caracas International Airport and told: 'Here is your suitcase, sir, get out of this country.'"
Chavez made these remarks the day after Manuel Espino, the leader of the National Action Party of Mexico, said in Caracas that the Venezuelan government was an example of the "demagogic tendency, populist and authoritarian, which infringes on the liberties and fundamental rights of the citizens." He accused Chavez of planning to stay in power forever and called his non-renewal of RCTV's broadcast license "an outrage." Chavez, criticizing the failure of his government to respond to the attack, said that, "No foreigner, whoever he may be, can come here to attack us. Whoever comes with that in mind has to be thrown out of the country. It can't be allowed, it's a matter of dignity."
5. He's a socialist.
A close friend of Fidel Castro, Chavez makes no bones about the fact that the Bolivarian Revolution is committed to "21st Century socialism." In fact, in a ceremony swearing in nine new leaders of the Bolivarian Armed Forces in the Caracas Military Academy on July 18, Chavez said that in Venezuela there's no longer an issue of socialism or capitalism, but rather what kind of socialism. "We aren't going to duplicate any model. . .," he said, adding that "without doubt it will rise on a foundation of authentic democracy . . . Democratic, because it is rooted in the sovereignty of the people, not in a man, a 'caudillo,' or the State." He swore that "we are going to dedicate ourselves with great effort to critical investigation and thought, in order to avoid a socialism that "degenerates." He said Bolivarian socialism is a Christian socialism that at the same time respects atheists, and an ecological socialism possessed of ethical values. His outgoing minister Raul Baduel said that "we should separate ourselves from the Marxist orthodoxy that considered democracy with its division of powers as merely an instrument of bourgeois domination," adding that "they also committed errors of an economic nature in socialist countries," such that it was necessary "to be on guard so as not to repeat them."
When the Soviet Union collapsed to much fanfare in the West, Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano declared that giddy capitalist triumphalists were burying the wrong corpse - socialist idealism rather than the ossified Soviet bureaucracy. Chavez has dug the former up and proven it isn't really dead. How can Washington not hate him for that?
Sources:
"Chavez destaca logros economicos y reitera empeno socialista y nacionalizador," Univision En Linea, 13 de enero de 2007
"Chavez pidio al Papa disculparse," Univision En Linea, 19 de mayo de 2007
"Chavez, amado por su pueblo," Univision En Linea, 4 de junio de 2007
"Chavez llamo 'ignorantes, perversos y mentirosos' a obispos venezolanos," Univision En Linea, 3 de julio de 2007
"Nuevos jefes militares juran cargos al grito de 'patria, socialismo o muerte,'" Univision En Linea, 18 de julio de 2007
"Chavez confirma buscara reeleccion y dice que no llorara si el pueblo lo echa," Univision En Linea, 22 de julio de 2007
"Chavez ordena la expulsion de extranjeros que hablen mal de su gobierno," Univision En Linea, 22 de julio de 2007
"Chavez - de lengua suelta," http://www.univision.com/content/content.jhtml?cid=1175849&pagenum=11
"The Meaning of 21st Century Socialism for Venezuela," Gregory Wilpert, Venezuela Analysis, July 11, 2006
John Pilger, The Guardian, May 13, 2006
"Timeline: Hugo Chavez," BBC News Online, November 24, 2006
"Chavez Wins Venezuela Reelection," BBC News Online, December 4, 2006
"Timeline Venezuela - A chronology of key events," BBC News Online, June 28, 2007
"Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution," by Richard Gott
"Pirates of the Caribbean - Axis of Hope," by Tariq Ali
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Ward Churchill's Real Sins
by Michael K. Smith
Ward Churchill's recent firing from the University of Colorado is a brazen act of political repression, a defeat for free speech, and further evidence that orthodoxy, not dispassionate scholarship, rules academia. His dismissal is not for the presence or absence of Indian blood in his veins, nor for his sins of scholarship, whatever those may be, but because he dared to compare the murderous operations of the U.S. national security state with the crimes of Nazi Germany. While resentment of Churchill's heavy-handed moralizing is perhaps understandable, applauding his termination is simply foolish collaboration in the destruction of everybody's rights.
Lost in the hysteria surrounding his essay comparing 911 victims with Adolf Eichmann is Churchill’s own view that certain perspectives are too reprehensible to see print. In his book A Little Matter of Genocide, Churchill is implicitly critical of Noam Chomsky for defending Holocaust revisionist Robert Faurisson’s free speech rights. Churchill calls Faurisson and others who question the existence of gas chambers in WWII “deniers,” which is an intellectual epithet as powerfully dismissive as “Nigger.” Churchill writes: “Faurisson became something of an international celebrity in 1981 when he was able to convince no less a figure than Noam Chomsky to defend his ‘right’ to publish denials that the Nazis had utilized gas chambers in exterminating Jews.” By placing the word “right” in quotation marks, Churchill suggests that Faurisson has no such right. In addition to the fact that Faurisson does indeed have an entitlement to free speech, which Chomsky properly defended, Churchill himself concedes to "ambiguity in the record" as to whether the complete elimination of European Jewry was ever "a fixed policy objective" of Nazi Germany, since the Third Reich pursued "a rather erratic and contradictory hodgepodge of anti-Jewish policies," which included an offer to trade a million Jews for 10,000 trucks in mid-1944. He dismisses as "irrational" the contention that the Nazis intended a "cosmic" total destruction of Jewry, pointing out that about two-thirds of world Jewry actually survived the Holocaust, as did around one-third of European Jews. [A Little Matter of Genocide, pp. 34-5]
In short, while roundly condemning Holocaust revisionists, Churchill has endorsed one of their main lines of contention, namely, that the exterminationist thesis flies in the face of the "hodgepodge" of Nazi actions against the Jews. His claim that this skepticism “in no way diminishes nazi culpability or Jewish suffering” will not likely convince anyone who believes that Jews were indeed exterminated as part of a “fixed policy objective,” commonly accepted to be an order from Hitler to physically annihilate every last Jew in Europe. The only way out of this dilemma is to drop the untenable view that one’s right to free speech should be proportionate to the acceptability of what one has to say. It is a bitter irony that Churchill has been fired for heresy, given his own belief in "criminal" speech.
Churchill argues that since assaults on truth and memory are a powerful part of the historical pattern of genocide, certain views therefore merit punishment, much as the infamous Jew-baiter Julius Streicher was convicted at Nuremberg for nothing more than publishing anti-Semitic propaganda. What he fails to indicate is by what logic we can condemn Pat Buchanan (who agrees with Churchill that Islamic terrorism is the fruit of U.S. Empire) for supporting Churchill’s dismissal on the grounds that his equating 911 victims with Adolf Eichmann is a form of “hate speech.” By Churchill’s calculation, sixty-nine percent of the twin towers dead were “little Eichmanns” dedicated to employments as objectionable as arranging transportation to Hitler’s death camps. Moreover, in the essay that got him fired Churchill asserts that American compensatory obligation for the crimes of the national security state would not be exhausted even if every last U.S. citizen were annihilated in future terrorist attacks. Those of a different political persuasion than Churchill’s might rather easily see this as more a prescription for genocide than anything Faurisson has to say on the existence or non-existence of gas chambers in World War II.
Furthermore, Churchill offers no critical comment on the jailing of Holocaust revisionists for their beliefs (such as Ernst Zundel, a case Churchill comments on), as though it were perfectly appropriate to try, convict, and sentence people to jail on the basis of their views of history. The highly elastic charge of historical falsification, worthy of every religious tyranny and military dictatorship in history, could be invoked against anyone and used to suppress all deviations from state orthodoxy; indeed, that is the only possible outcome widespread acceptance of its legitimacy could possibly lead to. Apparently, Churchill's passion for justice is so pure we need not worry about sentimentalities like free speech.
Churchill also cites Harvard political scientist Daniel Jonah Goldhagen without offering a critical evaluation of this rather dubious source. One of Goldhagen’s books, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, advances the improbable thesis that all WWII era Germans were driven by pathological hatred and thus leaped at the chance to exterminate the Jews. A claim so contrary to common sense barely needs refutation, but suffice it to say that Norman Finkelstein correctly pointed out that “the historical evidence for a murderous Gentile impulse is nil.” Furthermore, it bears keeping in mind that the blanket indictment of entire peoples for presumed evil was the justification for the firebombings during WWII, wherein hundreds of thousands of civilians were incinerated in attacks having little or no military significance. In a letter to War Secretary Henry Stimson in September 1944, FDR explained: “The German people as a whole must be punished for the Nazis’ ‘lawless conspiracy against the decencies of modern civilization’” [my italics]. Today, Churchill correctly reminds us that the U.S. then staunchly believed in collective guilt, maintaining that German civilians and military personnel alike “richly deserved the death and devastation” unleashed on them by the U.S. War Department. But he neglects to point out that neither Germans nor Americans have ever deserved to be burned alive or otherwise treated like ants and bedbugs.
Dismissive of class analysis, Churchill is rather too free about equating the entire American people with the elite institutions that have such a catastrophic impact on the world. He alleges that “Americans have in effect collectively lost their grip,” that a “preponderance” of the citizenry rejects the rules of civilized behavior (rules it may not even know exist) and has “enthusiastically embraced” a war on terror based on “massive perpetration of war crimes and crimes against humanity,” all of them well hidden from mass audiences in the U.S. In speaking of Newsweek casting an aura of “wide-eyed innocence” about the motive behind the 911 attacks, Churchill claims that this deceitful posture is one “the country” is perpetually eager to embrace. While conceding that relevant information about the murderous nature of the national security state is “distorted beyond recognition,” he nevertheless complains that “Americans greeted [Madeleine] Albright’s haughty revelation of genocide [by sanctions] with yawns and blank stares.” He follows this up with the claim that “the U.S. citizenry as a whole” was “willful and deliberate” in its ignorance about Iraq sanctions, as opposed to being excluded from political discourse on principle and bombarded with commercial and government propaganda on a scale that nearly defies description. Churchill refers vaguely to “Good Americans” in the same vein as stereotypical “Good Germans” and concludes that the problem in both cases is not their subordinate position and attendant distorted world view, but their own “not caring.” While castigating progressives for keeping guilt at arm’s length by latching on to “handy abstractions” such as “capitalism”, “the state”, “structural oppression” and “the hierarchy,” he makes reference to “the country,” “faceless bureaucrats,” and “Americans” in similarly vague ways.
In general, Churchill’s blanket indictment of the whole culture would be better directed at the intellectual class he has been fortunate enough to represent. Most working people in this country can only dream of the kind of income and unstructured time professors like Churchill have been granted as a professional prerogative, and rubbing their noses in atrocities they have rarely even heard of, let alone been given a chance to properly respond to, cannot possibly be a fruitful path. When dissent and popular organization has given it the information and analysis it lacks, the American public has come to reasonable conclusions, such as that the Vietnam War was “fundamentally wrong and immoral,” believed by a large majority of the population to this day as the result of popular organizing and education by anti-war activists decades ago.
In short, rather than demonize Americans with inflammatory comparisons to hopelessly caricatured Germans, it seems more humane, accurate, and promising to debunk the very notion that entire peoples are wicked or criminally indifferent. Though Churchill makes brief reference to Ian Kershaw’s biography of Hitler in an effort to substantiate his claim that “a lopsided majority of Germans were quite comfortable with -- and to a considerable extent openly celebratory of -– nazism’s 'triumphs and accomplishments,'" he ignores Kershaw’s documentation of considerable popular opposition to the Nazi regime in his Popular Opinion & Political Dissent in the Third Reich: Bavaria 1933-1945. In the latter book Kershaw summarizes the pre-war situation among German workers as follows: “The glimpses of worker attitudes which we have extracted from a mass of documentation suggest strongly that workers not only were unfree, in the Third Reich, but that most of them felt they were unfree, exploited, discriminated against, and the victims of an unfair class-ridden society in which wealth and opportunity were unevenly divided. Far from being won over to Nazism during the boom years of 1937-9, the signs are that Nazism was further losing ground among workers during this period.” These attitudes, not at all unfamiliar to working Americans today, became more entrenched when the bitter costs of war came home in subsequent years.
In the countryside, resentments were much the same. German peasants turned against the Nazis, resenting the obligation to produce food without enough helping hands, after which they were forced to sell only to Nazi appointed middlemen who paid far less than what was charged to the ultimate consumers. There was, says Kershaw, an “acute sense of exploitation among the peasantry, prompting deep antipathy towards the Party and regime, aloofness from the ‘great events’ of the war itself, and overwhelming preoccupation with material self-interest -- above all else the difficulties of acquiring sufficient farm labor.” In the fall of 1941, reports Kershaw, “Detestation of the Nazi regime was by this time almost universal in country areas.”
Nor can anti-Semitism be fairly said to have carried popular endorsement. Kershaw maintains that the Nazis recognized its unpopularity and did not even attempt to mobilize mass support for persecution of the Jews. Although the stereotype of the "Jewish Bolshevik" was used to galvanize support for Nazi policies, anti-Semitism did not resonate with anything like a majority of the population. Churchill, of course, indicts passive acquiescence as well as active collaboration, but in the context of a conflict in which entire continents were reduced to smoking ruins by policies poorly understood by the populations ordered to carry them out, it is not clear that the accusation carries much moral weight.
It is certainly true, as Churchill emphasizes, that international law requires Americans to find some way of making their leaders cease and desist from their criminal aggression and other lawless behaviors. But countries are populated by human beings, not demons. If we are to succeed in transforming Empire into a society within which a decent person might want to live, we would do well to recognize that prevailing arrangements are sustained by a false and manipulated consensus, not the enthusiastic endorsement of wickedness by conscious majorities.
Michael K. Smith is the author of Portraits of Empire and The Madness of King George (illustrations by Matt Wuerker), both from Common Courage Press. He can be reached at proheresy@yahoo.com. An earlier version of this article was published in 2005 by Press Action and Dissident Voice.
Ward Churchill's recent firing from the University of Colorado is a brazen act of political repression, a defeat for free speech, and further evidence that orthodoxy, not dispassionate scholarship, rules academia. His dismissal is not for the presence or absence of Indian blood in his veins, nor for his sins of scholarship, whatever those may be, but because he dared to compare the murderous operations of the U.S. national security state with the crimes of Nazi Germany. While resentment of Churchill's heavy-handed moralizing is perhaps understandable, applauding his termination is simply foolish collaboration in the destruction of everybody's rights.
Lost in the hysteria surrounding his essay comparing 911 victims with Adolf Eichmann is Churchill’s own view that certain perspectives are too reprehensible to see print. In his book A Little Matter of Genocide, Churchill is implicitly critical of Noam Chomsky for defending Holocaust revisionist Robert Faurisson’s free speech rights. Churchill calls Faurisson and others who question the existence of gas chambers in WWII “deniers,” which is an intellectual epithet as powerfully dismissive as “Nigger.” Churchill writes: “Faurisson became something of an international celebrity in 1981 when he was able to convince no less a figure than Noam Chomsky to defend his ‘right’ to publish denials that the Nazis had utilized gas chambers in exterminating Jews.” By placing the word “right” in quotation marks, Churchill suggests that Faurisson has no such right. In addition to the fact that Faurisson does indeed have an entitlement to free speech, which Chomsky properly defended, Churchill himself concedes to "ambiguity in the record" as to whether the complete elimination of European Jewry was ever "a fixed policy objective" of Nazi Germany, since the Third Reich pursued "a rather erratic and contradictory hodgepodge of anti-Jewish policies," which included an offer to trade a million Jews for 10,000 trucks in mid-1944. He dismisses as "irrational" the contention that the Nazis intended a "cosmic" total destruction of Jewry, pointing out that about two-thirds of world Jewry actually survived the Holocaust, as did around one-third of European Jews. [A Little Matter of Genocide, pp. 34-5]
In short, while roundly condemning Holocaust revisionists, Churchill has endorsed one of their main lines of contention, namely, that the exterminationist thesis flies in the face of the "hodgepodge" of Nazi actions against the Jews. His claim that this skepticism “in no way diminishes nazi culpability or Jewish suffering” will not likely convince anyone who believes that Jews were indeed exterminated as part of a “fixed policy objective,” commonly accepted to be an order from Hitler to physically annihilate every last Jew in Europe. The only way out of this dilemma is to drop the untenable view that one’s right to free speech should be proportionate to the acceptability of what one has to say. It is a bitter irony that Churchill has been fired for heresy, given his own belief in "criminal" speech.
Churchill argues that since assaults on truth and memory are a powerful part of the historical pattern of genocide, certain views therefore merit punishment, much as the infamous Jew-baiter Julius Streicher was convicted at Nuremberg for nothing more than publishing anti-Semitic propaganda. What he fails to indicate is by what logic we can condemn Pat Buchanan (who agrees with Churchill that Islamic terrorism is the fruit of U.S. Empire) for supporting Churchill’s dismissal on the grounds that his equating 911 victims with Adolf Eichmann is a form of “hate speech.” By Churchill’s calculation, sixty-nine percent of the twin towers dead were “little Eichmanns” dedicated to employments as objectionable as arranging transportation to Hitler’s death camps. Moreover, in the essay that got him fired Churchill asserts that American compensatory obligation for the crimes of the national security state would not be exhausted even if every last U.S. citizen were annihilated in future terrorist attacks. Those of a different political persuasion than Churchill’s might rather easily see this as more a prescription for genocide than anything Faurisson has to say on the existence or non-existence of gas chambers in World War II.
Furthermore, Churchill offers no critical comment on the jailing of Holocaust revisionists for their beliefs (such as Ernst Zundel, a case Churchill comments on), as though it were perfectly appropriate to try, convict, and sentence people to jail on the basis of their views of history. The highly elastic charge of historical falsification, worthy of every religious tyranny and military dictatorship in history, could be invoked against anyone and used to suppress all deviations from state orthodoxy; indeed, that is the only possible outcome widespread acceptance of its legitimacy could possibly lead to. Apparently, Churchill's passion for justice is so pure we need not worry about sentimentalities like free speech.
Churchill also cites Harvard political scientist Daniel Jonah Goldhagen without offering a critical evaluation of this rather dubious source. One of Goldhagen’s books, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, advances the improbable thesis that all WWII era Germans were driven by pathological hatred and thus leaped at the chance to exterminate the Jews. A claim so contrary to common sense barely needs refutation, but suffice it to say that Norman Finkelstein correctly pointed out that “the historical evidence for a murderous Gentile impulse is nil.” Furthermore, it bears keeping in mind that the blanket indictment of entire peoples for presumed evil was the justification for the firebombings during WWII, wherein hundreds of thousands of civilians were incinerated in attacks having little or no military significance. In a letter to War Secretary Henry Stimson in September 1944, FDR explained: “The German people as a whole must be punished for the Nazis’ ‘lawless conspiracy against the decencies of modern civilization’” [my italics]. Today, Churchill correctly reminds us that the U.S. then staunchly believed in collective guilt, maintaining that German civilians and military personnel alike “richly deserved the death and devastation” unleashed on them by the U.S. War Department. But he neglects to point out that neither Germans nor Americans have ever deserved to be burned alive or otherwise treated like ants and bedbugs.
Dismissive of class analysis, Churchill is rather too free about equating the entire American people with the elite institutions that have such a catastrophic impact on the world. He alleges that “Americans have in effect collectively lost their grip,” that a “preponderance” of the citizenry rejects the rules of civilized behavior (rules it may not even know exist) and has “enthusiastically embraced” a war on terror based on “massive perpetration of war crimes and crimes against humanity,” all of them well hidden from mass audiences in the U.S. In speaking of Newsweek casting an aura of “wide-eyed innocence” about the motive behind the 911 attacks, Churchill claims that this deceitful posture is one “the country” is perpetually eager to embrace. While conceding that relevant information about the murderous nature of the national security state is “distorted beyond recognition,” he nevertheless complains that “Americans greeted [Madeleine] Albright’s haughty revelation of genocide [by sanctions] with yawns and blank stares.” He follows this up with the claim that “the U.S. citizenry as a whole” was “willful and deliberate” in its ignorance about Iraq sanctions, as opposed to being excluded from political discourse on principle and bombarded with commercial and government propaganda on a scale that nearly defies description. Churchill refers vaguely to “Good Americans” in the same vein as stereotypical “Good Germans” and concludes that the problem in both cases is not their subordinate position and attendant distorted world view, but their own “not caring.” While castigating progressives for keeping guilt at arm’s length by latching on to “handy abstractions” such as “capitalism”, “the state”, “structural oppression” and “the hierarchy,” he makes reference to “the country,” “faceless bureaucrats,” and “Americans” in similarly vague ways.
In general, Churchill’s blanket indictment of the whole culture would be better directed at the intellectual class he has been fortunate enough to represent. Most working people in this country can only dream of the kind of income and unstructured time professors like Churchill have been granted as a professional prerogative, and rubbing their noses in atrocities they have rarely even heard of, let alone been given a chance to properly respond to, cannot possibly be a fruitful path. When dissent and popular organization has given it the information and analysis it lacks, the American public has come to reasonable conclusions, such as that the Vietnam War was “fundamentally wrong and immoral,” believed by a large majority of the population to this day as the result of popular organizing and education by anti-war activists decades ago.
In short, rather than demonize Americans with inflammatory comparisons to hopelessly caricatured Germans, it seems more humane, accurate, and promising to debunk the very notion that entire peoples are wicked or criminally indifferent. Though Churchill makes brief reference to Ian Kershaw’s biography of Hitler in an effort to substantiate his claim that “a lopsided majority of Germans were quite comfortable with -- and to a considerable extent openly celebratory of -– nazism’s 'triumphs and accomplishments,'" he ignores Kershaw’s documentation of considerable popular opposition to the Nazi regime in his Popular Opinion & Political Dissent in the Third Reich: Bavaria 1933-1945. In the latter book Kershaw summarizes the pre-war situation among German workers as follows: “The glimpses of worker attitudes which we have extracted from a mass of documentation suggest strongly that workers not only were unfree, in the Third Reich, but that most of them felt they were unfree, exploited, discriminated against, and the victims of an unfair class-ridden society in which wealth and opportunity were unevenly divided. Far from being won over to Nazism during the boom years of 1937-9, the signs are that Nazism was further losing ground among workers during this period.” These attitudes, not at all unfamiliar to working Americans today, became more entrenched when the bitter costs of war came home in subsequent years.
In the countryside, resentments were much the same. German peasants turned against the Nazis, resenting the obligation to produce food without enough helping hands, after which they were forced to sell only to Nazi appointed middlemen who paid far less than what was charged to the ultimate consumers. There was, says Kershaw, an “acute sense of exploitation among the peasantry, prompting deep antipathy towards the Party and regime, aloofness from the ‘great events’ of the war itself, and overwhelming preoccupation with material self-interest -- above all else the difficulties of acquiring sufficient farm labor.” In the fall of 1941, reports Kershaw, “Detestation of the Nazi regime was by this time almost universal in country areas.”
Nor can anti-Semitism be fairly said to have carried popular endorsement. Kershaw maintains that the Nazis recognized its unpopularity and did not even attempt to mobilize mass support for persecution of the Jews. Although the stereotype of the "Jewish Bolshevik" was used to galvanize support for Nazi policies, anti-Semitism did not resonate with anything like a majority of the population. Churchill, of course, indicts passive acquiescence as well as active collaboration, but in the context of a conflict in which entire continents were reduced to smoking ruins by policies poorly understood by the populations ordered to carry them out, it is not clear that the accusation carries much moral weight.
It is certainly true, as Churchill emphasizes, that international law requires Americans to find some way of making their leaders cease and desist from their criminal aggression and other lawless behaviors. But countries are populated by human beings, not demons. If we are to succeed in transforming Empire into a society within which a decent person might want to live, we would do well to recognize that prevailing arrangements are sustained by a false and manipulated consensus, not the enthusiastic endorsement of wickedness by conscious majorities.
Michael K. Smith is the author of Portraits of Empire and The Madness of King George (illustrations by Matt Wuerker), both from Common Courage Press. He can be reached at proheresy@yahoo.com. An earlier version of this article was published in 2005 by Press Action and Dissident Voice.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Imperial Demon Watch: Rafael Correa
by Michael K. Smith
Don't look now, but there's a Ph.D. economist running the government in Ecuador, and for once the doctorate degree does not stand for "permanent head damage." A self-described "humanist" and "Christian of the left," Rafael Correa is well embarked on a program of people-first social development designed "to overcome 20 years of a long and sad neoliberal night." He blames the "Washington Consensus" - U.S.-backed free market policies - for the region's economic ills, states forthrightly that dollarization has been the worst economic mistake in Ecuadorean history, has cut ties to the IMF and World Bank, is restructuring the national debt, has threatened to sue private banks for charging what he regards as exorbitant interest rates, and set up a Truth Commission to look into human rights abuses of the 1980s and 1990s. In the Cold War he would have been denounced as a Communist; today, he's denigrated as a "populist" and "authoritarian," as though there were something wrong with decisive leadership on behalf of a democratic majority.
Unenthused at the greed-is-good ethic championed by the "Colossus of the North," one of his first decisions after taking office in January was to double cash transfers to the poor, from $15 to $30 a month. He also declared a state of emergency in Ecuadorean health, education, and agriculture, helping unblock hundreds of millions of dollars in reserve funds formerly set aside to pay the public debt, but which now, in Correa's words, "pay the social debt." Naturally, Ecuadorean bonds took a beating on Wall Street, and the new president was soon asked what he intended to do about nervous investors. Correa responded: "If country risk goes up because of speculators worrying over our ability to pay the debt, I don't care. The country risk I care about is children suffering. If they're (investors) nervous, let them take a Valium."
In short, his anti-imperial heresy was apparent from the beginning, when he promised to tighten banking regulations to prevent capital flight, as well as retrieve $2 billion he said Ecuadorean banks had on deposit in the U.S.. "They want us to get on our knees begging for foreign investment when our own banks send money to Miami," he said. "We're financing foreigners and that's unacceptable." He promised to "put a tax on foreign speculation . . . including capital flight," but indicated direct foreign investment in Ecuador was welcome and said he had no plans to seize private property. "The only ones seizing anything," he pointed out, "are the bankers and financial speculators when they froze banking accounts in 1999."
In foreign relations Correa has aligned Ecuador with proponents of "21st century socialism" in Latin America, calling Hugo Chavez his friend, but rejecting any notion that the Ecuadorean people aren't to be masters in their own house. In fact, corrupt influence on national policy continually arouses his wrath. In early May he warned that tax evasion would no longer be tolerated and asked for support from the people to put an end to it. On a Saturday morning radio address he observed that in Ecuador "someone begins working in customs and in two months has more cars and houses, and everyone knows that he's stealing, but nothing happens." He said that the most honest countries are not those with the most police and anti-corruption laws, but those that make social pariahs of people who put their consciences up for sale. He also attacked the endemic corruption in the Ecuadorean Parliament, helping to mobilize popular support for a referendum calling for a Constituent Assembly, which passed by an 82% majority in April. Members of the new body will be elected this September 30, after which a new Constitution is to be drawn up. This is necessary, Correa maintains, in order to depoliticize the state, reorganize the Congress, and establish systems of autonomy.
Initially, Correa anticipated that the Constituent Assembly would serve alongside the existing Parliament, but in recent months he has concluded that the plutocratic body is beyond redemption and simply has to be dissolved. He has repeatedly berated it for being obsolete, horrifyingly corrupt, a den of thieves, controlled by a political mafia, and a disgrace to the country. He's so disgusted with its performance that he says he has no further interest in what it does, that he plans to work exclusively with the 58% majority that elected him. Recent polls put Correa's approval rating at 63%, although in his July 21 radio address Correa claimed an independent foreign polling firm reports that 82% rate his performance as either good or excellent.
Unlike Democrats in the U.S., who collapse at the first sign of Republican attack, Correa rises to the occasion when targeted by his opponents. In April, his chief legislative antagonist, Luis Almeida, attempted to embarrass him by announcing that Correa's father had been imprisoned for smuggling drugs to the U.S.. Correa responded with a lesson on capitalist economics. "I don't have anything to hide from the Ecuadorean people. I had a very hard childhood, and, at five years old, my unemployed father was imprisoned for three-and-a-half years for transporting drugs into the U.S." Dismissing Almeida as a "bastard" for attempting to use such forty year old news to political advantage, he pointed out that a five-year-old boy has no responsibility for what his father does, and then flatly refused to apologize on his father's behalf. "I don't condemn my father, I think he was a victim of the system, like so many others; my father wasn't a criminal, he was unemployed and desperately seeking to feed his family." He added that those who merit condemnation are not the small fry who rot in jail for years for the "crime" of trying to support their children, but the huge drug barons who traffic with impunity.
In May, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte paid a diplomatic call on Correa. While Ecuadorean protesters chanted "assassin" at Negroponte, who directed Washington's terrorist war against Nicaragua in the 1980s and is currently a key player in the "war on terror," Correa informed him that it was necessary to end the mercantilism characterizing U.S.-Ecuadorean diplomatic relations. Correa explained to the blood-soaked "dignitary" that Ecuador's planned Constituent Assembly was designed to recover Ecuadorean national sovereignty, as well as democratize and depoliticize the Ecuadorean state. His Secretary of State, Maria Fernanda Espinosa, told him that Correa didn't accept the principles of "Free Trade," and that the signing of a free trade agreement would be very damaging to small farmers and other Ecuadorean interests. She added that Correa insisted on the fact that Ecuador was embarked on a path of authentic social transformation and that there couldn't be political democracy without economic democracy. Since these are policies all too reminiscent of the Sandinista Nicaragua Negroponte worked so diligently to destroy, one can only hope that Correa's security is as tight as IMF loan requirements.
In a meeting with European Union ambassadors the day after his discussions with Negroponte Correa stated that the logic of mercantilism - the endless drive for profit and increased market share - was "one of the principal enemies of development." He denied that the Constituent Assembly was intended to allow him to rule by decree, as he had been accused of trying to do, but rather, would draw up a new Constitution that would reform political and economic institutions so that there would be governability and accountability, a real democracy, and a more just and participative economy. Justice, democracy, accountability, and public participation in government. Has he no shame?
No friend of Big Oil, Correa has undertaken a campaign to return national oil wealth to the people, rather than foreign investors. He objects to the practice of foreign oil companies taking four barrels of oil for every one they leave to Ecuador, and is fighting to reverse this ratio, which was the prevailing ratio 36 years ago when Ecuador first started producing oil. He has also accused Texaco of crimes against humanity for its pollution of the Amazon, which he says is 30 times worse than the Exxon-Valdez oil spill. He is backing a $6 billion lawsuit against Chevron (formerly Texaco) on behalf of indigenous people victimized by the pollution. On another oil front, he says he would understand if one of his cabinet ministers resigned in protest at a decision to drill the ITT reserve in ecologically sensitive Yasuni National Park, which may have to be done because of the large majority of Ecuadoreans forced to live in poverty. "Poverty is the principal danger to the environment," explains Correa, who is calling on the international community to compensate Ecuador for not drilling the ITT reserve.
As in Venezuela, media elites in Ecuador are aghast at Correa's program and attack him at every opportunity. In return, Correa denounces them as corrupt and habitual liars. On the dispute between Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Radio Caracas Television, he says if an Ecuadorean T.V. station had supported a coup in Ecuador he wouldn't have waited for their license to expire before yanking it away from them. During the 2002 anti-Chavez coup, which RCTV backed, the network aired cartoons, giving no news about the kidnapping of Chavez.
Finally, Correa has a sense of humor, which is a refreshing surprise in a profession addicted to sound bite choreography. He once joked that the U.S. could keep its Air Force base at Manta as long as Ecuador could have a similar base in Miami, and called George W. Bush "a tremendously dimwitted president who has done great damage to his country and to the world." Asked his reaction to Hugo Chavez calling George W. Bush the devil, Correa conceded it was unfair - to the devil.
Correa's Vice-President, Lenin Moreno, stated recently that "the principal objective of the Ecuadorean government is to redistribute the wealth with equality and make participants of those groups that have always been marginalized." Moreno observed that Correa's efforts have won the confidence of Ecuadoreans and once again made the people believe in the presidency. In a region of the world that has experienced more than its fair share of Washington's policy of "Killing Hope," as dissident author William Blum calls it, that's no small achievement.
Sources
""The Rise of Rafael Correa," www.counterpunch.org, November 27, 2006
"Rafael Correa declared winner in Ecuador," Taipei Times, November 30, 2006
"Ecuador Leader Eyes Wealth Distribution," CBS News Online, December 2, 2006
"Correa nego crisis politica," Univision Online, 14 de marzo de 2007
"Correa: mi padre estuvo preso en EU," Univision, 14 de abril de 2007
"'Si'" a nueva asamblea en Ecuador," Univision, 16 de abril de 2007
"Tightening his grip," Economist Online, April 19, 2007
"Correa cumple cien dias de gobierno," Univision, 24 de abril de 2007
"Correa acusa a Texaco de 'crimen de lesa humanidad' por contaminar Amazonia," Univision, 27 de abril de 2007
"Presidente de Ecuador advierte que no permitira mas evasion de impuestos," Univision, 5 de mayo de 2007
"Correa aceptaria dimisiones en su gabinete por discrepancias por campo ITT," Univision, 5 de mayo de 2007
"Negroponte expresa en Ecuador deseo de EE.UU. de ampliar el ATPDEA," Univision, 9 de mayo de 2007
"Correa trato con Negroponte preferencias arancelarias y relacion comercial," Univision, 9 de mayo de 2007
"Correa pide a comunidad internacional respetar proceso politico de Ecuador," Univision, 10 de mayo de 2007
"Correa es partidario que Asamblea Constituyente disuelva el actual Congreso," Univision, 23 de junio de 2007
"Correa reitera modelo economico 'ecuatoriano' sin influencias extranjeras," Univision, 23 de junio de 2007
"Molestia de legisladores en Ecuador," Univision, 25 de junio de 2007
"Ecuador warns of default on foreign debts," Financial Times Online, July 5, 2007
"Correa denuncia presunto intento de chantaje de 18 diputados al gobierno," Univision, 7 de julio de 2007
"Correa dice en caso similar a RCTV el cancelaria 'inmediatamente' licencia," Univision, 11 de julio de 2007
"Vicepresidente de Ecuador califica como positivo primer semestre de gobierno," Univision, 16 de julio de 2007
"Correa se burla de juicio politico den Congreso que intenta la oposicion," Univision, 21 de julio de 2007
Don't look now, but there's a Ph.D. economist running the government in Ecuador, and for once the doctorate degree does not stand for "permanent head damage." A self-described "humanist" and "Christian of the left," Rafael Correa is well embarked on a program of people-first social development designed "to overcome 20 years of a long and sad neoliberal night." He blames the "Washington Consensus" - U.S.-backed free market policies - for the region's economic ills, states forthrightly that dollarization has been the worst economic mistake in Ecuadorean history, has cut ties to the IMF and World Bank, is restructuring the national debt, has threatened to sue private banks for charging what he regards as exorbitant interest rates, and set up a Truth Commission to look into human rights abuses of the 1980s and 1990s. In the Cold War he would have been denounced as a Communist; today, he's denigrated as a "populist" and "authoritarian," as though there were something wrong with decisive leadership on behalf of a democratic majority.
Unenthused at the greed-is-good ethic championed by the "Colossus of the North," one of his first decisions after taking office in January was to double cash transfers to the poor, from $15 to $30 a month. He also declared a state of emergency in Ecuadorean health, education, and agriculture, helping unblock hundreds of millions of dollars in reserve funds formerly set aside to pay the public debt, but which now, in Correa's words, "pay the social debt." Naturally, Ecuadorean bonds took a beating on Wall Street, and the new president was soon asked what he intended to do about nervous investors. Correa responded: "If country risk goes up because of speculators worrying over our ability to pay the debt, I don't care. The country risk I care about is children suffering. If they're (investors) nervous, let them take a Valium."
In short, his anti-imperial heresy was apparent from the beginning, when he promised to tighten banking regulations to prevent capital flight, as well as retrieve $2 billion he said Ecuadorean banks had on deposit in the U.S.. "They want us to get on our knees begging for foreign investment when our own banks send money to Miami," he said. "We're financing foreigners and that's unacceptable." He promised to "put a tax on foreign speculation . . . including capital flight," but indicated direct foreign investment in Ecuador was welcome and said he had no plans to seize private property. "The only ones seizing anything," he pointed out, "are the bankers and financial speculators when they froze banking accounts in 1999."
In foreign relations Correa has aligned Ecuador with proponents of "21st century socialism" in Latin America, calling Hugo Chavez his friend, but rejecting any notion that the Ecuadorean people aren't to be masters in their own house. In fact, corrupt influence on national policy continually arouses his wrath. In early May he warned that tax evasion would no longer be tolerated and asked for support from the people to put an end to it. On a Saturday morning radio address he observed that in Ecuador "someone begins working in customs and in two months has more cars and houses, and everyone knows that he's stealing, but nothing happens." He said that the most honest countries are not those with the most police and anti-corruption laws, but those that make social pariahs of people who put their consciences up for sale. He also attacked the endemic corruption in the Ecuadorean Parliament, helping to mobilize popular support for a referendum calling for a Constituent Assembly, which passed by an 82% majority in April. Members of the new body will be elected this September 30, after which a new Constitution is to be drawn up. This is necessary, Correa maintains, in order to depoliticize the state, reorganize the Congress, and establish systems of autonomy.
Initially, Correa anticipated that the Constituent Assembly would serve alongside the existing Parliament, but in recent months he has concluded that the plutocratic body is beyond redemption and simply has to be dissolved. He has repeatedly berated it for being obsolete, horrifyingly corrupt, a den of thieves, controlled by a political mafia, and a disgrace to the country. He's so disgusted with its performance that he says he has no further interest in what it does, that he plans to work exclusively with the 58% majority that elected him. Recent polls put Correa's approval rating at 63%, although in his July 21 radio address Correa claimed an independent foreign polling firm reports that 82% rate his performance as either good or excellent.
Unlike Democrats in the U.S., who collapse at the first sign of Republican attack, Correa rises to the occasion when targeted by his opponents. In April, his chief legislative antagonist, Luis Almeida, attempted to embarrass him by announcing that Correa's father had been imprisoned for smuggling drugs to the U.S.. Correa responded with a lesson on capitalist economics. "I don't have anything to hide from the Ecuadorean people. I had a very hard childhood, and, at five years old, my unemployed father was imprisoned for three-and-a-half years for transporting drugs into the U.S." Dismissing Almeida as a "bastard" for attempting to use such forty year old news to political advantage, he pointed out that a five-year-old boy has no responsibility for what his father does, and then flatly refused to apologize on his father's behalf. "I don't condemn my father, I think he was a victim of the system, like so many others; my father wasn't a criminal, he was unemployed and desperately seeking to feed his family." He added that those who merit condemnation are not the small fry who rot in jail for years for the "crime" of trying to support their children, but the huge drug barons who traffic with impunity.
In May, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte paid a diplomatic call on Correa. While Ecuadorean protesters chanted "assassin" at Negroponte, who directed Washington's terrorist war against Nicaragua in the 1980s and is currently a key player in the "war on terror," Correa informed him that it was necessary to end the mercantilism characterizing U.S.-Ecuadorean diplomatic relations. Correa explained to the blood-soaked "dignitary" that Ecuador's planned Constituent Assembly was designed to recover Ecuadorean national sovereignty, as well as democratize and depoliticize the Ecuadorean state. His Secretary of State, Maria Fernanda Espinosa, told him that Correa didn't accept the principles of "Free Trade," and that the signing of a free trade agreement would be very damaging to small farmers and other Ecuadorean interests. She added that Correa insisted on the fact that Ecuador was embarked on a path of authentic social transformation and that there couldn't be political democracy without economic democracy. Since these are policies all too reminiscent of the Sandinista Nicaragua Negroponte worked so diligently to destroy, one can only hope that Correa's security is as tight as IMF loan requirements.
In a meeting with European Union ambassadors the day after his discussions with Negroponte Correa stated that the logic of mercantilism - the endless drive for profit and increased market share - was "one of the principal enemies of development." He denied that the Constituent Assembly was intended to allow him to rule by decree, as he had been accused of trying to do, but rather, would draw up a new Constitution that would reform political and economic institutions so that there would be governability and accountability, a real democracy, and a more just and participative economy. Justice, democracy, accountability, and public participation in government. Has he no shame?
No friend of Big Oil, Correa has undertaken a campaign to return national oil wealth to the people, rather than foreign investors. He objects to the practice of foreign oil companies taking four barrels of oil for every one they leave to Ecuador, and is fighting to reverse this ratio, which was the prevailing ratio 36 years ago when Ecuador first started producing oil. He has also accused Texaco of crimes against humanity for its pollution of the Amazon, which he says is 30 times worse than the Exxon-Valdez oil spill. He is backing a $6 billion lawsuit against Chevron (formerly Texaco) on behalf of indigenous people victimized by the pollution. On another oil front, he says he would understand if one of his cabinet ministers resigned in protest at a decision to drill the ITT reserve in ecologically sensitive Yasuni National Park, which may have to be done because of the large majority of Ecuadoreans forced to live in poverty. "Poverty is the principal danger to the environment," explains Correa, who is calling on the international community to compensate Ecuador for not drilling the ITT reserve.
As in Venezuela, media elites in Ecuador are aghast at Correa's program and attack him at every opportunity. In return, Correa denounces them as corrupt and habitual liars. On the dispute between Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Radio Caracas Television, he says if an Ecuadorean T.V. station had supported a coup in Ecuador he wouldn't have waited for their license to expire before yanking it away from them. During the 2002 anti-Chavez coup, which RCTV backed, the network aired cartoons, giving no news about the kidnapping of Chavez.
Finally, Correa has a sense of humor, which is a refreshing surprise in a profession addicted to sound bite choreography. He once joked that the U.S. could keep its Air Force base at Manta as long as Ecuador could have a similar base in Miami, and called George W. Bush "a tremendously dimwitted president who has done great damage to his country and to the world." Asked his reaction to Hugo Chavez calling George W. Bush the devil, Correa conceded it was unfair - to the devil.
Correa's Vice-President, Lenin Moreno, stated recently that "the principal objective of the Ecuadorean government is to redistribute the wealth with equality and make participants of those groups that have always been marginalized." Moreno observed that Correa's efforts have won the confidence of Ecuadoreans and once again made the people believe in the presidency. In a region of the world that has experienced more than its fair share of Washington's policy of "Killing Hope," as dissident author William Blum calls it, that's no small achievement.
Sources
""The Rise of Rafael Correa," www.counterpunch.org, November 27, 2006
"Rafael Correa declared winner in Ecuador," Taipei Times, November 30, 2006
"Ecuador Leader Eyes Wealth Distribution," CBS News Online, December 2, 2006
"Correa nego crisis politica," Univision Online, 14 de marzo de 2007
"Correa: mi padre estuvo preso en EU," Univision, 14 de abril de 2007
"'Si'" a nueva asamblea en Ecuador," Univision, 16 de abril de 2007
"Tightening his grip," Economist Online, April 19, 2007
"Correa cumple cien dias de gobierno," Univision, 24 de abril de 2007
"Correa acusa a Texaco de 'crimen de lesa humanidad' por contaminar Amazonia," Univision, 27 de abril de 2007
"Presidente de Ecuador advierte que no permitira mas evasion de impuestos," Univision, 5 de mayo de 2007
"Correa aceptaria dimisiones en su gabinete por discrepancias por campo ITT," Univision, 5 de mayo de 2007
"Negroponte expresa en Ecuador deseo de EE.UU. de ampliar el ATPDEA," Univision, 9 de mayo de 2007
"Correa trato con Negroponte preferencias arancelarias y relacion comercial," Univision, 9 de mayo de 2007
"Correa pide a comunidad internacional respetar proceso politico de Ecuador," Univision, 10 de mayo de 2007
"Correa es partidario que Asamblea Constituyente disuelva el actual Congreso," Univision, 23 de junio de 2007
"Correa reitera modelo economico 'ecuatoriano' sin influencias extranjeras," Univision, 23 de junio de 2007
"Molestia de legisladores en Ecuador," Univision, 25 de junio de 2007
"Ecuador warns of default on foreign debts," Financial Times Online, July 5, 2007
"Correa denuncia presunto intento de chantaje de 18 diputados al gobierno," Univision, 7 de julio de 2007
"Correa dice en caso similar a RCTV el cancelaria 'inmediatamente' licencia," Univision, 11 de julio de 2007
"Vicepresidente de Ecuador califica como positivo primer semestre de gobierno," Univision, 16 de julio de 2007
"Correa se burla de juicio politico den Congreso que intenta la oposicion," Univision, 21 de julio de 2007
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